Tremors in the Earth
by whattheDalek
Summary: Kassien was destined to fail: this was fact. It really was too bad her new friends didn't believe in destiny. Another OC on Team Seven fic. Something new, slightly serious, and a little silly.
1. A Day of Firsts

**Feel free to ignore the essay of an author's note I wrote, but it may answer any questions you may have.**

 **Summary:** Kassien was destined to fail: this was fact. It really was too bad her new friends didn't believe in destiny. Another OC on Team Seven fic. Something new, slightly serious, and a little silly.

 **Or, in which Real Life hits that cliche hard.**

 **Characters:** Naruto, Sasuke, Kakashi, OC, and Kiba (although, not necessarily in that order), but there will probably be an appearance from all our favorites, let's be honest.

 **Warnings:** Swearing, OC, violence (this is _Naruto_ , where babies are killed for the sake of science. And to prove one's worth), Maito Gai. Pairings are undecided as of yet, and are unlikely to go anywhere for the time being, but anyone who likes OC stories should find this one fun. Hopefully.

 **Kind of follows canon? Maybe?**

 **No knowledge of the future in this one. Sorry guys. This is the first universe our OC is born in. She's also a bit of a head case. If you're looking for a strong personality in an OC, you've come to the wrong place. Not everyone can be Type A.**

 **Stylistic Choice:** a bit dense and passive at first, for a reason. Should lighten up later, but who knows how OC will change. You can take a breather-I won't bombard you with tons of hais and ano sa ano sa and futons and dotons and whatever the hell-I don't know any Japanese and I won't pretend to. However, since honorifics have importance to the culture, I'll do my best to uphold tradition. I may get it wrong, and if I do, politely inform me in a PM or review or something. Nevertheless, I may switch to the Japanese word for something (for example: Taijutsu, Genjutsu, the word Jutsu, names for particular food dishes, etc) when it sounds better than the English equivalent _in that particular situation._ Admittedly, I am fairly partial to the 'Maa' or 'Mah' other fanfiction writers use with Kakashi. It captures his (perceived) laziness so perfectly. Again, I'm going with whatever sounds good. Sorry if that bother you, but, as always, don't like, don't read.

 **Remember, this is pure fiction, created for both your and my entertainment. If you get something out of it, good. If not, oh well. I'm not looking to win any prizes here, just trying to have fun, and hopefully create something enjoyable :)**

 **Sorry for the long author's note, but if you can't tell, I'm a little nervous.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own _Naruto._ If I did, it would be significantly less weird.**

 **Have fun!**

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Chapter 1: A Day of Firsts

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The classroom was noisy today.

Usually, Room Four at the Academy was a haven of calm—a starch place inhabited by orderly rows of desks and chairs, settled within an atmosphere of respect that inspired quietude through the boredom and chalk dust they breathed. A place for sleepy children, attentive children, for children who've yet to allow duty to calcify in their bones. Somewhere Kassien had long associated with warmth and safety, despite the dubious topics of study.

Today, however, young voices fought to be heard, humming in and out of coherency as Kassien's focus shifted, like the gentle thrum of a river as its necessity for survival, or lack thereof, determined her attention. Sunlight bathed the classroom through large square windows, touching upon the heads of her year mates as they flitted from table to table, excited with the promise their newly earned forehead protectors awarded them. Although distinct groups discordantly flocked the classroom, their discussions were more or less the same, wondering for the future now that their dreams had become a reality. The level of noise plummeted and rose erratically when the Uchiha boy settled into his seat, propping his chin upon still fingers and gaze resolutely ahead. His fangirls, hearts in their eyes, flocked together and cooed in creepy unison, and then fought amongst themselves for the single seat next to him. Kassien linked from her corner, quite disinterested, and wished there was some way to staple their mouths closed without extensive consequences for herself—if anything, Iruka-sensei would be Most Displeased. Choji, plump and oblivious in the seat below Kassien's, was equally noisy, kicking his feet to scuff the floor with his toes, chip packet crinkling as he stuffed himself stupid, pale crumbs dusting his desk. Beside him, Shikamaru remained miraculously asleep. On the opposite side of the classroom, Shino huddled into his jacket, ducking into his collar like a timid turtle, and Kassien wondered if he was bothered by the noise as well. She herself considered slipping out the back door, or possibly a window, but the dramatic entry supplied by the two-man circus that was Sakura and Ino put her plans on pause. And, she supposed, such cowardice would be marked down as insubordination.

Repressing a sigh, Kassien resigned herself to wait out the noise until their Chunin-sensei arrived. Kassien liked Iruka-sensei. He was kind and patient and composed . . . that is, at least until Naruto grew bored and did something to shatter the calm spell of instruction, and Iruka-sensei would have no choice but to shout and throw things—which Kassien did not like—because Naruto did not listen to Reason. And made a mockery of Transformation Technique. And encouraged boys to ditch class when boredom itched at his spine until he had to do _something._ Really, Naruto Uzumaki was naughty, but perhaps it was this calm safety of the classroom that made the demon feel he _could_ be so loud here.

Kassien blinked once more, and tucked herself further into her seat when the loud one with red clan markings dropped into the chair on her left. Naruto was here, crouched on a desk and peering with uncomfortable closeness into the face of the Uchiha. Why was Naruto here? His failure to pass the Genin exam last week hadn't been a secret. And yet, here he was, the silver leaf swirling on his forehead from underneath wild strands of spiky yellow hair. So why . . . ?

"Oh, _sick,_ dude!" Kiba cringed, stuffing his blonde pup further into his jacket and zipping it tight.

"Troublesome." Shikamaru was awake now, and vaguely disturbed.

"I was not mentally prepared for that," Kiba whined, scrubbing at his eyes with closed fists. A high-pitched yelp of agreement sounded from within his jacket, muffled and almost complementary. "Ugh. There's _got_ to be a Time Jutsu for shit like this."

"Unfortunately not," Shikamaru muttered, returning his head to the pillow of his folded arms. "Believe me; I've checked."

"Poor Naruto," Choji mourned, downtrodden as he carefully pocketed his unfinished bag of chips. The majority of their female classmates simultaneously rolled up their sleeves, radiating a hatred (and a worrying predisposition for murder) Naruto could sense himself—that is, Kassien assumed he could from the tense line of his shoulders, but he did not turn to face them. He instead continued to use his sleeve as a napkin, scrubbing his tongue with a compulsive fervor as though it would wash away the accidental kiss. As though sharing the thought, both Naruto and the Uchiha shared a glance, and shuddered.

A nudge to her side startled Kassien from her thoughts, and she scooted back in alarm, her chair shrieking as it skid beneath her.

It was only Kiba. "Why aren't you down there with them?" He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb, indicating the Room Four Uchiha Fangirls versus Naruto Uzumaki showdown. It wasn't much of one. Kassien mentally cringed at the image, preferring Kiba's bold features to the unfair match. "You're a girl. I thought girls like Uchiha."

Shikamaru breathed a sigh of long-suffering into his elbow. "Don't bother, Inuzuka. She's mute. She couldn't talk to you even if she wanted to, and I don't see why she would. _I_ don't even want to talk to you most days."

Something hot and thick spiked up from Kassien's stomach, brushing unpleasantly at her throat before plunging sharply back down. Was this what people thought of her? It surprised Kassien that people thought of her at all. That she'd been noticed, despite all efforts not to be. Kiba thought she was an Uchiha fangirl. Shikamaru believed her a mute. She'd never given it a thought before, that others had opinions of her, strong in her belief that she'd pressed herself so far into the walls that she was _nothing_ to these people. But the Nara's assumption had thrown her. She felt lightheaded. And now she couldn't help but wonder what others thought: did they agree with Shikamaru, that she didn't talk because she couldn't? Or were they like Kiba, who seemed to believe that all girls were the same? Did they think her a bad ninja? A bad person? Stupid? Did they think her shy? Why did they think of her in the first place? She didn't want to be thought of.

Kiba slammed his hands to the table, pushing himself to a stand. "You got something to say, Pineapple Head?"

"You're _annoying_ ," Shikamaru groaned, settling from a hunch over his desk to a slouch in his chair, arms crossed over his chest and head tilted to the ceiling. His dark eyes lazily marked Kiba's ire. "And you take everything so _personally._ Why do you have to fight over _everything_? Just relax. Iruka-sensei's not going to be here for at least another five minutes."

Choji nodded as though Shikamaru's word settled the matter.

There was a twitch in Kiba's draw. "You lazy types really piss me off," he said, and gestured roughly to the leaf headband tied around the Nara's arm. "How'd you even get that, when all you ever did was sleep in class?"

Shikamaru's eyes narrowed slightly, and the corner of his mouth pulled down. "How'd you even pass the exam, when you've fought Naruto for the honor of being Dead Last?"

The desk creaked under the pressure of Kiba's hands, white-knuckled around its lip. His parka trembled and growled. Shikamaru, still slouched, merely raised an eyebrow. Choji had regained his appetite, snacking at such a pace his hands were a blur to Kassien's eyes.

Kiba joined the growl—a deep, feral thing from within his chest that Kassien felt in her bones. "When this stupid thing is over, I'm going to skin you and feed your scraps to the—"

"I'm not mute."

The three boys, previously having forgotten her existence, now eyed her in open surprise. Kassien struggled with the urge to curl in her chair like a pill bug. She didn't know why she said it. She had no right to step in, and fought the instinct to apologize. Quickly, she analyzed her actions, surprised at herself. Maybe she wanted to correct their assumptions; she disliked inaccuracies, something she learned about herself after years of studying the ninja arts. Maybe she wanted to rid of these palpable feelings of antagonism. Whatever the reason, it worked. Her response was a little late, but as she'd little experience interacting with her peers outside an academic setting, she excused herself for this mistake.

The silence between them stretched over the peripheral noise of her other classmates, and her heart stuttered in her ribcage. She overstepped some unspoken boundary—it wasn't her place to speak. These weren't her friends. She didn't have friends. Kassien's palms sweated, and she brushed them against her black pants in hopes that friction would warm them. She didn't know what she was supposed to do next. She swallowed. She shouldn't have said anything.

"So you _can_ talk," the Nara said at last, eyes normally glazed with sleep now sharp with an intelligence she hadn't seen before. It felt assessing.

Strengthened by the lack of aggression, Kassien turned to Kiba. "And I'm not crazy."

Kiba's slanted eyes widened from beneath his forehead protector, and he raised his hands in the same placating manner she'd seen Naruto do just moments before. His usual grin had cowed into something small and nervous. "I never said you were."

Kassien blinked. "You asked me why I wasn't helping those girls punish Uzumaki-san. My answer: I'm not crazy."

Another silence, this one shorter and less oppressive than the one before. Kiba's eyebrows—dark and sharp, tempered by generations of simplistic, canine expressions—furrowed in brief confusion before he threw his head back and laughed. It was an obnoxious thing that attracted attention and left her ears ringing. Slightly concerned, Kassien looked to Shikamaru. The intelligence had gone now, back to its sleepy-eyed boredom. His smirk held no answers. Choji was no help either, but at least his binge eating had slowed to a healthier pace.

When Kiba's laughter subsided into intermittent giggles, the boy threw his arm over a startled Kassien, dragging her close to his side. The shock at such easy comradery kept her from pulling away, as did the warmth spreading across her shoulders, seeping through his thick jacket and the five points of pressure on her arm. Her nose was very close to his armpit. Earth's nature musk clung to him in an ephemeral film, muting the less pleasant odor of wet dog, sweat, and something else she couldn't really name. She felt out of place, like a rook jolted diagonally, and she could only think that she'd never been so intimate with another human being before.

"You're alright, for a girl," Kiba told her. "Weird that I'd never noticed you before, but I guess that's what makes a good ninja, right?"

Shikamaru groaned again, muttered something about "too easy." For her part, Kassien didn't know what to say. It was as though she'd hit a wall, and she felt woefully unequipped to deal with such a foreign situation. Taijutsu training recommended a hit to the groin—the nearest vulnerability—but other options were equally available, and most likely more effective: breaking the fingers of the hand that held her; pressure points in the back of the neck (but no, the hood of his parka protected him from most of that); crushing his windpipe with her foot; throwing him over her shoulder and onto the desk (as well as Shikamaru and Choji as collateral damage); a hard thrust to the stomach, and then to the chin when he doubled over; climbing up to his shoulders and using their combined weight to pull them down. Her Genjutsu admittedly needed more work, but she could Body Switch with anything in the room. Distract him with a clone . . .

But . . . no. He wasn't harming her. And she wasn't completely opposed to what she now recognized as a hug (defined: the act of holding tightly in one's arms, typically to express affection). Should she say something? Thank him for his kindness?

Before she could make a choice, Kiba let her go. He held out his other hand. "I'm Kiba Inuzuka."

Kassien already knew this—they'd had class together since the age of eight—but society dictates introductions as a reciprocal activity, and any previous knowledge would be deemed irrelevant. Relief soaked her tense joints. This, she knew how to do.

"Kassien Otawa," she said, shaking his hand.

He then unzipped his jacket—and Kassien, feeling as though she'd been peeled off the wall and flung into a metaphorical pile of highly sociable wolves, had a fleeting moment of hysteria that he'd start undressing—but thankfully stopped when the blonde pup poked through his previous prison. It gave a cursory sniff. "And this is Akamaru!"

The puppy yipped, its fluffy head brushing under Kiba's chin, and Kassien had to smile.

True to Shikamaru's word, Iruka-sensei entered the classroom five minutes later, his very presence inspiring an instant quiet unlike anything previously displayed in all their years at the Academy. A few boys in the front row instantly stilled, scrambling to hide a glossy magazine, eyeing their teacher with equal guilt and suspicion. Naruto woozily sat up, holding his stomach, as the fangirls hastily retreated from their pile. Even Kiba, who'd been keeping a steady, almost one-sided stream of chatter about the dogs at his family kennel, quieted at Iruka-sensei's entrance. It was a silence charged with anticipation, every eye trained on the scarred teacher before them.

Iruka-sensei smiled, scroll in hand, and began a speech detailing their expectations as Genin of Konoha. How they would be split into teams of three, led by a Jonin-sensei. At this point, Shikamaru sighed, clearly bored. Kiba's leg jittered under the table.

"And now, your team assignments," Iruka-sensei said, and opened the scroll with an unnecessary flourish. There would be nine teams, he'd explained, and her read down the list, immune to both cheers and groans at each assignment. Kassien sat still in her corner, Akamaru a ball of warmth on her lap, and watched Iruka-sensei's mouth shape each syllable, almost unhearing as she automatically charted each team, cataloging the skillset and relative ranking in class, wondering at the system used for each grouping. From what she could tell, it was completely erratic. Some teams had an average collective of talent, while others boasted a clan affiliation, or a strong intelligence. In essence, unpredictable. Kiba glanced at her recurrently, and Kassien wondered if he wanted his dog back.

". . . Team Seven: Kassien Otawa, Sasuke Uchiha, and Naruto Uzumaki."

The demon shot up as though his seat had bit him. "Iruka-sensei!" he shouted, pitch loud and angry as he pointed to the ever-impassive Uchiha across the room, "why does an outstanding ninja like me have to be on the same team as that fucker over there!"

"NARUTO!" Iruka-sensei-s face achieved the hue of a ripe tomato. "That language is highly inappropriate! And as for your placement, Sasuke's grades were the best of all twenty-seven graduates. You were dead last. Do you understand? We had to do this to balance the teams!"

Naruto scowled and crossed his arms as the majority of the class poked at his admonishment. This was a normal occurrence in class, but, surprisingly, Naruto's shoulders itched toward his ears under his orange jumpsuit, mouth pressed to a thin, pale line. Usually the demon would do his best to have the last word. Perhaps this tense line, silent amongst the petty mirth of his classmates, was an acknowledgement of Iruka-sensei's ugly truth. Kassien's fingers twisted in the soft fur of the puppy, the corner of her mouth twitching downward in sympathy. She'd never liked the easy humiliation candidly handed to Naruto. It hit too close to home for her own comfort. Surely, even demons felt rejection and failure.

"Just don't get in my way . . . Dead Last." The Uchiha's softly spoken words seemed to project with the same volume as Naruto's shouts.

" _What did you just call me?"_

 _This is hell_. Kassien decided to emulate Shikamaru and slouched in her chair, gradually inching herself to the floor as though the action would encourage spontaneous knowledge of a melting jutsu so she could slip to the floor and just lie there. Kiba watched her do so, glee bubbling under a carefully maintained expression of polite interest her usually saved for hour-long lectures, but Kassien couldn't bring herself to care. She'd make a good puddle. No need for speech. No need to meet this combative team from hell. She'd be safe from scrutiny and expectation as a lowly, skill-less puddle, and then she could make her inconspicuous getaway. With Akamaru in her seat, a random puddle underneath him wouldn't be so farfetched. But Kiba halted any plans of anonymity as he burst into laughter, drawing the attention of the entire class, including the new teammates she'd been trying to avoid. Kassien gripped Akamaru tightly, feeling rather ill.

Iruka-sensei scowled. "Is something funny, Kiba?"

Kiba grinned gamely. "Just appreciating the irony, sir!"

Mirth touched at Iruka-sensei's brown eyes, which darted to Kassien and back, but his mouth remained unsmiling. "Save it for after class, Kiba." He then consulted his scroll. "You're on Team Eight with Shino Auberame and Hinata Hyuga."

"Sounds like the teams are stacked, Sensei," Kiba said, still grinning. "I like it."

The mirth faded from Sensei's features, and with its absence shadows seemed to collect under his cheekbones, darkening the suddenly tense line of his mouth and the wide gap of scar tissue strained across his nose. His eyes sharpened, but when all Kiba did was grin, Iruka-sensei ignored him in favor of the scroll.

"Since Team Nine is already in effect, the last of our class will fill Team Ten." Iruka-sensei's voice had returned to its normal calm droll, rolling the scroll with a decisive snap. "Choji Akimichi, Shikamaru Nara, and Ino Yamanaka."

"So predictable," Shikamaru muttered to Choji, who nodded in acquiesce.

"Your Jonin-sensei will come along to collect you shortly," Iruka-sensei continued, clasping his hands at his lower back. "As you are now legal adults, you hardly need me for supervision any longer. I wish you the best of luck. You will do Konoha proud."

When he smiled, there was something troubled about it, but the sentiment was genuine.

Not long after Iruka-sensei left, Jonin came to pick up their charges, emptying the classroom in a slow trickle. Kassien thought she'd recognized a few of them—at the market handling produce with a clinical eye, dropping down from rooftops like leaves from trees to them walk amiably down the street, sitting at food stalls alone or with comrades, guarding plates of food with hunched backs and pointed elbows—but she couldn't be entirely sure. Memory wasn't one hundred percent accurate. Shikamaru's team was among the first to leave—the boy himself uttering a pained "what a drag" as he reluctantly staggered up from his seat to follow a passingly familiar man out the door. As he left, Kassien realized with a funny jolt that this was likely the last time this class would gather in its entirety; she'd never heard of Academy reunions. That observation likely explained the longing nostalgia tugging at Iruka-sensei's smile before he disappeared into the hallway. A woman wrapped in bandages came to collect Kiba's team, and the boy grinned winningly at Kassien when she returned the puppy to his care, promising her a visit to the family kennels.

It wasn't long until Kassien, Naruto, and the Uchiha were left alone in the classroom. Silence pressed around them with the same suffocating closeness as a crowd on festival day, difficult to wade through and more than a little stuffy. One of the girls had cracked the windows open an hour ago, and a pleasant spring breeze slipped into the classroom, cleansing chalk dust and luke-warm remnants of nearly thirty little bodies from the corners. Birds twittered just outside, the sound weaving through the occasional thud of weight and chakra as ninjas perused the rooftops. The Uchiha hadn't moved an inch since that morning, elbows on the table, head resting upright on his thumbs, fingers clasped before his nose as he stared straight ahead. Kassien had yet to witness him blinking, which was more than a bit concerning. Naruto wriggled in his seat, but had managed to keep a rare hold on his mouth. In all, it was peaceful, if not a little boring.

That is, until Naruto realized they were the only ones left and surveyed the classroom, eyes glossing over empty seats until they rested upon Kassien in her corner.

"Hey, are you that Kassien chick? The one on our team?" he asked, squinting up at her.

Nerves blossomed in her chest—so rarely was she directly addressed by those other than her father—and she nodded, unable to speak without croaking like a frog. The Uchiha looked over his shoulder, then away. It felt like a dismissal. Kassien swallowed.

"I'm Naruto Uzumaki!" The demon gestured to himself with a thumb to his chest. It seemed her known acquaintances of four years were to reintroduce themselves today. "Hey, hey, you should come down here with us! We're teammates now, so we gotta get used to each other."

 _Stay away from that demon_. Her father's coarse words ripped through her mind, and she hesitated from the slightest of moments. As a former ninja of Konoha, Shoin Otawa was a respectable man of experience and intelligence Kassien couldn't ever hope of achieve herself, and to disagree or disobey him would result in embarrassment on her part, as well as a crippling sense of shame for having disappointed his expectations. If he said Naruto Uzumaki was a demon, then that was what he was. The only problem: Kassien wasn't entirely certain what being a demon entailed, or what one looked like. Her father never said. And as she sat in her corner, silent and watchful as Naruto invited her over (to converse like a normal person), grin wider than Kiba's and just as friendly, she couldn't help but think Naruto looked more like a boy than a demon.

Her introspection must have taken longer than she originally thought, for Naruto's welcoming smile dimmed like the sun resting over the horizon after thanklessly lighting the day, and she nodded without further thought. She licked her lips. She'd seen him that day, a despondent lump of orange on the tree swing, arm curled around the chain as he watched the celebrating families of their peers from afar. Shadows had struck him with an uncharacteristic bitterness. She'd looked away for a moment, searching for her own father, but when she turned back to the lawn, Naruto had gone. It had been such an odd sight—Naruto was normally so cheerful, even after taking an embarrassing beat down from the Uchiha—and Kassien had to refine her definition of a demon once more. After years of observation, Kassien could only conclude that Naruto was harmless. Maybe her father was trying to protect her, but like most parents, had overestimated the danger. Despite everything, demons had feelings, too.

Her heart shuddered within the cage of her ribs, disrupting her ability to breathe until splotches of anxiety faded from her back and chest. Tremors skimmed strength from her legs. Another heartbeat, and Kassien managed to stand. Hesitation held tight to her remaining grace, and she feared tripping down the steps to the lowest platform with her teammates.

But when Naruto's smile returned to its full force, Kassien knew she made the right decision. It warmed her with a courage that replaced her previous anxiety, and she could walk and breathe normally. Surely a happy demon was a friendly one. Father would understand. All she had to do was keep him happy.

Kassien took the seat between Naruto and the Uchiha, awkwardness settling upon her shoulders. The Uchiha gave no indication he noticed her presence, head still turned to the window, deep in thought. The sun glared from the rooftops, trickling down to the quiet residential street across from the Academy. Wind tickled blades of grass into gentle, swaying movement that mimicked the branches above, scraping at cloudless skies with rigid fingers.

"How come I've never seen you before?" Naruto asked, and Kassien twisted to stare into the bluest eyes she'd ever seen. The color echoed daytime sky, and it was beautiful as it was intimidating.

The Uchiha let out a rude noise. "Because you're self-centered and imperceptive."

Naruto's fist fell sharply to the table, startling Kassien nearly out of her seat. "Was I talking to you, Bastard?"

The Uchiha smirked, saying nothing.

Slowly the snarl walked itself off Naruto's face, the angry wrinkles bunching between his eyebrows smoothing back into an open friendliness. He blinked at Kassien as though she'd appeared out of nowhere.

"Your eyes are strange," he remarked.

Kassien fumbled with the sleeve of her shirt under the table. "Oh."

"Ah, I mean, not _bad_ strange!" Naruto exclaimed, voice pitched at least half an octave higher. He waved his arms as though to wash away his previous words. "I meant that I've never seen green eyes before. Not like yours." His hands fluttered helplessly. Then, he brightened. "You shouldn't worry about eyes, though—lots of people in Konoha have weird eyes. Like Hinata-chan. Her eyes are _scary_. And she must have a lot of uncles or brothers or something, because they're _everywhere._ And then there's those awful red eyes the policemen had, believe it—"

The Uchiha snapped to attention at this, and from her periphery she watched him slowly lower his hands to his lap.

"—they _hated_ me, and those stupid sticks they carried _hurt_." He paused, eyes scrunching in thought as he scratched at his head. "I haven't seen them in a while, though."

"I have my mother's eyes," Kassien offered, for lack of anything better to say.

The demon grinned widely enough his cheeks pushed open eyes into happy crescents, and a tension Kassien hadn't noticed before released in her stomach. So, demons were nice. Or, at least, this one was. She didn't know why her father was so worried. Guiltily, Kassien wondered if there were other demons around. They were much easier to talk to than humans.

Nevertheless, Kassien couldn't hold a conversation for long, especially given her lack of practice and asocial tendencies, and their talk of weaponry and favored Taijutsu stances and Iruka-sensei petered out into a mutual question of where their Jonin-sensei could possibly be. Kassien's throat burned with use, and she swallowed thoughts of cool water and hot soup until they gurgled in her stomach. It was about time for lunch, now. Naruto had apparently exhausted his ability to sit still, humming a familiar tune as he puttered about the classroom. With sure fingers he tilted thick volumes of _The History of the Ninja_ to stand on the bottom edge of their spines before slotting them back, and the swiped at the dust coating the shelves. Settled himself in Iruka-sensei's Very Forbidden Do Not Touch Chair, smile elated at his daring. Picked at kunai grooves in Iruka-sensei's desk. Balanced white sticks of chalk upright on the sill, then pilfered one to draw a fair imitation of Hokage Mountain on the blackboard. He gave the Fourth more attention than the others, adding an extra spike and narrowing the curve on his jaw after consulting the view just outside the window, feet kicking at the air as he pushed himself half out the classroom. Kassien herself wished she'd the forethought to bring a book. Instead she resigned herself to waiting patiently, her thoughts vying for attention as Naruto's puttering quieted in a reflective study.

In the back of her mind, Kassien considered multiple possibilities for their sensei's absence, each accumulating the nerves in her chest with more strength than others: he simply forgot, and was now sitting at the barbeque house eating his fill of sizzling pork; he slept in, tired from a night of partying at the places her father forbid her ever enter; he was on a mission, and couldn't return because he'd been defeated in battle; he won the battle, but now lay injured in the hospital, unconscious as medic-nins reattached his arm . . .

"What are you doing now, Idiot?" the Uchiha asked, scorn picking at his lip.

Naruto now stood tiptoe on the seat of a chair he'd pulled from the first row, wedging a blackboard eraser between the wall and the sliding door. "I'm going to get Sensei so good!" he snickered.

The Uchiha's eyes slitted hatefully. "No Jonin's going to fall for that."

Eraser firmly in place, Naruto hopped down from the chair and kicked it back to its place. "Hey!" Naruto's shrill call sliced clean through the previous calm, and Kassien could no longer recall the birdsong she didn't know she'd been listening to. "I'll have you know I prank many ninja—Chunin and Jonin alike! They always fall for it because they don't expect to be pranked by the totally awesome Naruto Uzumaki!" He nodded decisively, smacking his hands together to rid the evidence of his transgressions. Dust like white smoke plumed from his palms and dissipated into the air. "Besides, it serves Jerkface-sensei right for being so late. Everyone else is gone but us!" Naruto twisted to inspect his masterpiece, hands on hips, and nodded again. "Right. I'm bored. Wanna play hangman?"

"Pass," the Uchiha snorted.

Derision peeled Naruto's lips over straight teeth. "I wasn't asking _you,_ you nosy prick. I was asking Kassie-chan."

The warmth of inclusion fluttered in her stomach again, and Kassien nodded her approval before her father's voice could hold her back. The nickname had surprised her, but like Kiba's impulsive side-hug, she found she didn't mind in the least. No one had ever called her Kassie-chan before. Today seemed to be a day of firsts. It was more wonderful than she could have imagined. Her fingers and toes jittered with a pleasant energy, and she squirmed happily in her seat.

Naruto grinned at her. "All right!" He pumped his fist, then raced to the blackboard in a blur of yellow and orange, drawing up the hangman's noose in the free space beside his rendition of Konoha's famed landmark. Underneath, he marked five blank spaces for each letter.

Having had Naruto in class for the past few years, Kassien had a strong suspicion she knew what it was. However, she found that, rather than prove her knowledge, she wanted to prolong the game; she waited a few letters before 'guessing' the letter 'A.'

The Uchiha, however, had no such compunctions. "It's 'Ramen,'" he snorted.

More than a little pissed, Naruto pelted the Uchiha with his chalk. "Shut up, you bastard!" he shouted. "I thought you weren't playing!"

"Don't make it so obvious." The Uchiha scowled down his front, brushing the stick of chalk from his leg before smudging its fine dust into a smear on the fabric of his right shoulder. It didn't easily rub away. "I thought you were a ninja."

"I _am_ a ninja!"

"Mah, mah, what's the ruckus?" came an unfamiliar voice from the door. Clear and mild, the voice swept underneath theirs, and Kassien and the others had turned in surprise as a gloved hand slid open the door. As a man stepped through, the eraser immediately dropped into his hair, dusting him in years of accumulated projectile calculations and punishment lines before continuing its fall to the floor. The man watched its progression blankly with one eye, hand still clamped around the door.

Bewilderment stretched the Uchiha's face into asymmetry until he pressed it into apathy. Kassien's eyes were wide.

Naruto, true to his character, had doubled over in laughter, one arm wrapped around his stomach while the other pointed at the man. "He fell for it! He fell for it! I told you he would! Hahaha, Naruto Uzumaki strikes again!"

The man scratched idly at his mask. "My first impression of you?" he said mildly, lone eyelid drooping as though he was in danger of falling asleep. "You're annoying."

Incredulity cut Naruto's laughter short. " _We're_ annoying? You're _LATE!_ We've been here for three hours."

The man raised a silver eyebrow, which disappeared briefly into his slanted forehead protector. "And you all just sat there?"

Naruto's mouth dropped open. The Uchiha's eyes burned.

"Meet me on the roof." And with that, the man disappeared in a swirl of leaves.

Stunned into momentary complacency, the three of them exchanged expression that were either chagrined or confused—both, in Naruto's case.

"I'm guessing that was our sensei," Kassien said when neither of her teammates made any movement toward the door.

"Obviously," the Uchiha scoffed, and Kassien hunched into herself as though to soften a blow to her stomach, all previous feelings of comfort and inclusion shrinking from her extremities to curl like a wounded dog in her chest. The boy then shouldered his way past Naruto, steps both indolent and deliberate, drawing the door wider to disappear into the hallway.

She shouldn't have said anything—once again, she crossed some sort of unspoken boundary she knew nothing of. Kassien swallowed, and it was thick in her throat. She only wanted to get along with her team. She thought they'd been making progress.

Clearly not.

Calloused skin interrupted her contemplation of the desk, pink with health and weathered lines faintly crossing the smaller, deeper gouges that come with catching shuriken. Dirt smudged at the wrist and dug into grooves left by swirling fingerprints. It took Kassien a moment to realize she was looking at a hand. She raised her head. Naruto grinned, the thin, dark marks scoring his cheeks curving around his projected carelessness. He'd stepped into a pillar of light, and the sun bent around his hair, shrouding him in a film of gold.

"Come on, Kassie-chan," he said. "We'll make those bastards see us. You'll see."

Timidly, she took his hand. Her fingers barely curled around the back curve of his palm when he yanked her out of her seat and dragged her out of the classroom. She stumbled after him, sandals slipped unsurely upon slick gray tile as she willed her legs to keep up, surprised by his speed. Walls like thick, emerald fern blurred on the fringe of her vision. Protests stuttered ineffectually from her mouth, unheard and tumbling to crash at her feet only to be stomped by Naruto's haste. Just as she was about to ask how to even get to the roof, Naruto reached out and jerked open a door, and swung her around to enter before him.

"I'll race you to the top!" Naruto yelled, and crashed up the stairs, steps erratic and heavy as Kassien's racing heart. Surprised (although she really shouldn't have been), Kassien shook her usual propensity from her frame and darted up after him, pumping her arms in an effort to propel herself forward. Stale, damp air invaded her lungs, burning through the exhale. Both she and Naruto passed the Uchiha on the way up. The boy's mutter of "undisciplined idiots" almost made her stop in shame, but the demon cheered her on, and Kassien found she couldn't. She was a few seconds behind Naruto when he kicked the door open, flooding the dim stairwell with blue skies and a cool breath of dusty cement and leaves.

"Hah! I win!" Naruto cried, both fists in the air.

Kassien stopped beside him, hands gripping her thighs as she heaved to her knees.

"That . . ." she gasped, "was ridiculous."

Naruto rubbed under his nose, giving his usual mischievous snicker. "Heh, it's even funnier because you beat the bastard up here."

Kassien tilted her head curiously. "How so?"

Naruto blinked. "'Cause you're a girl."

"Oh." Kassien nodded like this made sense. It didn't.

An abrupt throat clearing caught their attention. Their new sensei sat at the edge of the roof. He slouched over his waist, arms crossed over the standard, muted green flak jacket awarded to those ranked Chunin and higher, long legs straight out before him and connected at the ankle. Dark blue fabric reached under his baggy long sleeved shirt and stretched upward to palm the majority of his face, over his nose and along his cheeks, ending just under his right ear. Like most Konoha ninja the man's forehead protector rested above his eyebrows, but unlike all others it skewed to cover his left eye, leaving about an eighth of the man's face exposed. As though dissenting the confined nature of his attire, a shock of silver hair sprouted in reckless abandon atop his head, standing on end like he'd just stuck a fork in an electrical outlet.

"You sure took your time," the man stated, blinking lazily at them.

Naruto vibrated with anger, fists clenching and unclenching as if he'd like nothing more than to wring their new sensei's neck. "You . . . you . . ." He pointed one finger at the man in challenge, trembling within the wrinkled orange jumpsuit, face contorting in strange shapes as he struggled with the words to adequately describe the man in front of them. "You . . . !"

The man tilted his head, his one eye closing upwards in a way that eerily reminded Kassien of a baby doll. "Me," he concluded happily. He could have been smiling, but Kassien couldn't really tell. The inability to judge his emotions for herself unnerved her.

Naruto deflated, expelling breath like a popped balloon, and turned to Kassien. "I'm actually so annoyed I can't feel anything anymore," he said, eyes wide in wonder. "Is this what it's like to be Iruka-sensei?"

"You're an idiot," the Uchiha informed Naruto from behind them, blinking into the bright day before he adjusted, eyes forming their usual irate slant. He trudged forward, hands in the pockets of his beige shorts. "Why don't you do us a favor, Loser, and gag yourself with that headband?"

"I will when you remove that stick from your ass!" Naruto yelled, dogging the Uchiha's steps. Anger visibly blossomed within his face, flushing through his cheeks to scrunch around his eyes, in between his eyebrows, and in the usually jovial corners of his mouth. The Uchiha merely sighed, only stopping the sit on the steps before their sensei.

"What energetic students I have," the man said lightly.

Naruto, figuring now wasn't the time for a fight with his proclaimed rival, sat as well, choosing the furthest corner from the Uchiha, back turned to the boy, lip bubbled in a pout. The man inspected the Uchiha—who'd rested his elbows on his knees to hold his head upon interlocked fingers—to Naruto—whose arms folded in silent protest against his chest—to Kassien—who had yet to move from her place by the stairwell. He tilted his head in question.

Kassien realized her mistake with a start. She hurried to sit on the step equidistant from her teammates, folding her hands in her lap, shame striking her cheeks with muted fire.

"Well!" the man said brightly, clapping his hands together once, "I think some introductions are in order. How about we start with the loud, orange one?"

 _More introductions?_ Kassien thought, a little underwhelmed. _Well, at least I get to meet one new person today._

The demon's arms unfolded, and he turned to face their sensei completely. "What do you want to know?"

The man shrugged. "Your name, what you like, what you don't like, hobbies, goals for the future—that sort of thing."

"Hey, Sensei, how about you go first?" Naruto suggested, his anger at the Uchiha momentarily forgotten. He rocked forward in excitement. "Show us how it's done!"

The man's eye closed, and he gave off a deep hum. "I'm Kakashi Hatake. I don't really feel like talking about my likes and dislikes. I have many hobbies. Dreams for the future?" He tilted his head in consideration, but didn't say anything. A few birds few overhead, twittering faint as the wind twisted it away. If Kassien trained her ear hard enough, she'd be able to pick up the quiet mumble of the marketplace just a few blocks down the street.

"Now you go," Kakashi said after a long minute.

"Right." The demon shook himself from his open stare. "I'm Naruto Uzumaki. My favorite thing is ramen, especially when Iruka-sensei treats me to ramen! I hate the three minutes it takes for ramen to cook. My hobbies include gardening and comparing different types of ramen—"

 _So demons love ramen_ , Kassien concluded, quite bewildered as Naruto's eagerness at the subject grew exponentially at every word. _Does he dream to open a ramen shop?_

"—and my dream is to become the Hokage, so everyone will respect me and accept me for who I am!"

Kassien blinked. That was nearly as abrupt as his haywire emotions.

Their sensei, nevertheless, remained unaffected. "Now the girl."

The three of them turned to look at her, and Kassien's tongue instantly cemented to the roof of her mouth. Her previous desire for the melting jutsu returned with frightening clarity, but her team expected something from her.

 _It's just an introduction_ , Kassien told herself, licking her lips.

"I'm," (her throat was terribly dry, a little cracked from her prolonged conversation with Naruto earlier, and she cleared it before trying again) "I'm Kassien Otawa. I like . . . I like . . ." What _did_ she like? She wasn't completely sure. Her hands were uncomfortably clammy, and she clenched her fingers into the baggy fabric of her black pants. Dry and starch, perfect for excessive activity in temperate weather, familiar under her palms. She could do this. It was only an introduction. Just tell the truth. "I don't like or dislike much of anything," she said honestly. "My hobbies . . ." What did she do for fun? No, that's not right. What did she do when she'd finished her duties? Homework, Taijutsu, and "Reading. Uh . . ." She forgot the last one, and appealed to Naruto silently. His blue eyes were much closer than she'd anticipated, encompassing the entirely of her vision. Something unpleasant and cool slid down her back. She didn't think she liked this much attention.

"A goal for the future," the demon prompted helpfully.

"Right." She took a deep breath. This one was easy. "I want to become someone my father can be proud of."

Kakashi nodded. "And the dark, broody one."

The Uchiha's dark eyes narrowed at their sensei, but flicked back to something that may be a burn mark on the roof as though nothing else was worth his time. "My name is Sasuke Uchiha. I don't like many things, and I dislike more things. Hobbies are pointless and a waste of time. And my dream is more of an ambition . . . an ambition to restore my clan . . . and to kill a certain man."

The words chilled the flow in her veins, raising gooseflesh on her arms and the back of her neck. _Girls like that?_

Naruto's laughter rang in her ears, pulling her from her perplexed terror and back onto the roof of the Academy. The demon had fallen off the low step they sat on, clutching his gut as tears streamed in transparent rivulets down his whiskered face. For a moment, Kassien was concerned—had the Uchiha punished him again?—but as her sense of sound reconnected to her thoughts, she understood Naruto's tears were of mirth, not of pain or sadness. She blinked at the sight, then shrunk back at the Uchiha's glare: two pits of black anger chipped from a face of marble, hatred usually reserved for Naruto etched in the line of his mouth and the set of his eyebrows.

"Mah, so critical, Kassien-kun," Kakashi said, but his tone was far from reprimanding. He sounded almost gleeful.

It was then that Kassien realized she said her last thought out loud.

Horrified, Kassien fastened her hands to her face. This only made Naruto laugh harder.

"Oh my God," she said. "I'm so sorry, Uchiha-san. It slipped out."

Kakashi coughed into his fist. Twice.

The Uchiha grunted low in his throat, and lifted his chin to peer at her from the end of his nose. It seemed that, in her aspiration to become a respectable ninja of Konoha like her father, she'd offended the last of the Uchiha and befriended a demon.

It seemed she only existed to be a despicable human being.

* * *

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 **Updated: September 2017**


	2. The Bell Test, Part I

**Warning for slight stream of consciousness? Kassien gets a little more anxious than usual.**

 **Disclaimer: Kakashi is my favorite. I won't lie.**

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Chapter Two: The Bell Test, Part I

* * *

The day was a hot slap to the back of the neck, and Kassien regretted having pulled her hair up today. Kakashi's promise of survival training to determine their worth as Genin of Konoha had weighed on her mind the night before, and though she'd briefly consulted her past Academy notes before bed, she couldn't help the feeling there really wasn't much she could do to prepare. A sixty-six percent failure rate, he'd said. And as Kassien dressed that morning—wrapping bandages snugly above her right knee, then again around her ankles before strapping up her ninja standard sandals—she wondered why. Sixty-six percent seemed oddly specific. A round two-thirds. With Jonin as their testers, Kassien wondered why the failure rate wasn't higher. She knew there was something there, but when she arrived at Training Ground Three, already perspiring in her jacket just before six-thirty in the morning, it immediately hit her that a Jonin was her opponent, and she fought the rabbit urge to run. Combined with the hot sun and lack of sustenance, she felt ready to faint.

Courage was a hard-won commodity for the breathless, and Kassien inhaled swiftly to quell the nerves pinching at her sides, straightening the set of her shoulders and adjusting her small pack to ease the ache making itself home in her right shoulder. It calmed her considerably as she recalled the near nonexistent death rate of pre-Genin ninja. With each step she set the pace for her often unreliable respiration, and continued her careful breathing as she sat within the shade of the nearest tree. And waited.

And _waited._

And this was where she remained four and a half hours later, joined by her teammates, _still waiting_ for their sensei to arrive. The Uchiha sat beneath the same tree—most likely chosen for its proximity to the entrance, at a strategically sound angle preferable when anticipating an informant, but perhaps not an enemy of unknown abilities (wherein the best position would be to remain unseen)—arms crossed over his chest as he allowed the bark to hold up his person. Head tilted back to free his chin from a high-collared shirt, the Uchiha watched with half-lidded eyes as Naruto tested himself against the unmoving shrubbery, an orange smear against the day. The demon ran from tree to tree, slashing recklessly at the bark, kicking off others to roll into a crouch before digging kunai into the ground. The demon repeated this for a while, then switched to punch a tree stump over and over, short yells accompanying each hit.

"Would you _sit down?"_ the Uchiha snarled when Naruto's flailing limbs strayed closer to his face than normally acceptable in a non-combat situation. The demon had moved onto their tree when the others had suffered enough abuse.

"Can't," Naruto panted. The Uchiha's fingers dug into his elbows. "I'm so bored. Like, really, _really_ bored. I just have this strong feeling, like I need to _do_ something, you know?"

The Uchiha stared unblinkingly at Naruto, annoyance digging lines under dark eyes.

"How about you, Kassie-chan?" Naruto implored, now crouched in front of her with his hands on his knees, blue eyes almost gray in the shadows. Sweat glistened from his scalp, spiky hair drooping with its weight and trailing down his whiskered cheeks.

"Uzumaki-san?" Kassien was uncertain to what she was supposed to answer.

The demon's cheeks blew out like a frog's before he expelled his breath in a puff of air. "It's 'Naruto,' Kassie-chan. We're teammates, now." He let his legs kick out and leaned back on his hands, chest heaving. Kassien was hyperaware of how close Naruto's left foot was to her leg. She shifted slightly, pulling her knees to her chest. "And do you feel like that?"

"Like what?" Kassien parroted.

"Like you've got too much energy, but you don't want to waste it?"

The question was exceedingly earnest, and Kassien found herself reluctant to say she didn't. Disagreement often assured argument, and Kassien wanted so badly to get along with her teammates, especially this blonde demon looking at her as though her opinion meant something. His blue eyes, almost much too large for his round, childlike face, had fixed upon her as though she was the only thing in the world, like she somehow _mattered_. The fact that she'd managed to inspire such interest from another person baffled her. She was almost uncomfortable with this knowledge, and wished she hadn't thought of it in the first place.

"Kakashi-sensei said we've survival training today," Kassien said, feeling oddly diplomatic. It felt almost like a lie, and she averted her eyes. "He said he was to be our opponent. Shouldn't we conserve our energy?"

"I guess," the demon pouted, large eyes glancing away as they narrowed at nothing in particular.

Kassien swallowed. Had she said the wrong thing?

"But that stupid sensei won't know what hit him," Naruto decided with renewed vigor. "I'll kick his ass until he's crying for his mommy, and then he'll _have_ to acknowledge me. I'm Hokage material, believe it!"

The Uchiha snorted, rolling his head from his contemplation of the wavering leaves above him to Naruto, contempt a jarring, yet somewhat familiar, slash on his otherwise handsome face.

"Who in their right mind would make _you_ Hokage?" Malice had accompanied the snarl, sharp and biting and hot despite his cold, cold eyes.

"The villagers, once they see how awesome I am," Naruto retorted.

Sweat froze at Kassien's neck. "We," she breathed, heart pounding so fiercely she could faint. Her voice was so quiet. "We shouldn't fight—"

The Uchiha's dark eyes skewered her now, pale face pinched with mild disgust. "And who the hell are you, anyway? Do you really think you have any business telling us what to do? You're weaker than that idiot."

Blood drained from her cheeks. There was a pounding in her head now, fast and fluttering like the wings of a bird. Why did she say anything? Why did she ever open her mouth? Time and time again she proved she was a defective cog in the machine of humanity, unable to click along with the others. And the others knew this, could sense it, and would toss her aside to increase their own productivity while she rightfully collected dust, unused and unfit. Why did she still try, when it was clear the more effective gears did not want her to? Why was she even here?

When Kassien didn't respond instantly, Naruto jumped to his feet, fists clenched as he stalked to the Uchiha's side of the tree. "Why are you so fucking mean?" the demon demanded, just centimeters from the boy's nose. Standing half a head shorter, it was quite a feat for Naruto to appear just as intimidating, bristling like a yowling cat. "Kassie-chan did nothing to you."

The Uchiha sneered. "Debatable."

"Are you still mad about what she said yesterday?" Naruto asked, incredulity momentarily sparing the Uchiha from his ire. "She already apologized for that! She obviously didn't mean it. She said it slipped."

"So unless she means it, she can say whatever she likes?" the Uchiha asked, a sardonic tilt to his head. "Then I _guess_ it's okay."

"Wait. So you hate when girls follow you around, but when one says she doesn't like you, it pisses you off? You're a hypocrite!"

"And you're her guard dog?" The boy looked the demon up and down as though measuring his mettle, and scoffed when finding him lacking. "Get out of my face. I don't want a repeat of yesterday."

Naruto recoiled. "And I _do?"_

So caught in their argument, wringing her hands as the fight escalated into something that would be difficult to douse, Kassien didn't notice their sensei had literally poofed into existence beside her until he greeted them with a, "Boy, is it hot out here, or is it just me?"

This startled Kassien so badly she jumped a few feet in the air. Kakashi watched her descent blankly, then eyed the Uchiha and the demon with something she couldn't quite comprehend. Not with the silhouette his dark attire offered, mask and forehead protector wrapped around his features.

"It's probably you two," Kakashi posited.

Naruto whirled around to face him, finger pointed as though that would be enough to pin their sensei down. " _You're late!"_

"Yo." Kakashi raised his hand, eye closed. "No need to be alarmed. A black cat crossed in front of me, so I had to take the backroads."

The Uchiha eyed him in open disgust. "You're a Jonin and you take the backroads?"

"'A ninja must exhaust his every resource,'" Kakashi quoted, eye capped with boredom. "Especially when avoiding black cats. And green beasts," he muttered as an afterthought, then shuddered within his flak jacket.

The Uchiha raised an eyebrow.

After a moment their sensei seemed to collect himself as he cleared his throat, straightening from his slouch. "But, I made it in one piece, and, more importantly . . ." He reached into the pocket of his dark pants and held out his hand. Two silver bells dangled from a red string, tangled at his middle knuckle.

Naruto squinted at him. "Bells?"

"Precisely," Kakashi said. When he jerked his hand, the bells bounced without a sound. "You have until noon to take these from me. Whoever fails in this task will be tied to that stump over there." He pointed to the edge of the clearing where the three stumps Naruto had been using earlier stood, backed up to a dense wall of foliage. Atop the middle stump sat a little black alarm clock. Kassien eyed their sensei, who used the rare contemplative silence between the three Genin to tie his bells to a belt loop, head ducked down, static hair nearly blocking his actions from view. Somehow, he'd silently set up the clock as he spoke with them. They hadn't even noticed.

Sweat trickled like a shiver down her spine. Something that subtle was both difficult and eerie . . . and considerably beyond their skill level.

"The little loser won't get lunch," Kakashi continued cheerfully, as though he loved nothing more than to torture children. For all Kassien knew, this might be true. She wished she'd braved the living room and asked her father about him last night. She'd been so worried about the final test and the demon that she'd forgotten a very important rule: a good ninja gathers information about possible contenders and areas before a mission. A ninja always comes prepared. Kassien was mortified at her negligence. She was a bad ninja!

Either ignorant or uncaring of Kassien's inner dilemma, Kakashi said, "I'll have the pleasure of eating it right in front of you."

"You're evil," Naruto said weakly, clutching his stomach. This statement was punctuated by a loud gurgle, and his fingers tightened on the orange fabric of his jumpsuit. For his part, the Uchiha seemed to be in agreement, expression surprisingly not hostile, but rather put out by this betrayal. Kassien believed she knew why: here was the real reason behind his order not to eat breakfast.

Kakashi tilted his head and closed his eye—something Kassien was slowly beginning to understand was a smile of sorts. "I like to think of it as . . . motivation."

(But from what Kassien could tell, the man only seemed to smile at the most inappropriate of times.)

The Uchiha's brow furrowed. "Motivation . . ." he said slowly, and his expression cleared. "You only have two bells. You're going to make us fight each other for them."

"So smart, Sasuke-kun!" their sensei praised, but mockery exaggerated each syllable. "I'm glad to know at least one of you can count! Since there are only two bells, at the very least, one of you will be disqualified from the mission. He or she will then return to the Academy."

But . . . that didn't make any sense. Yesterday, Kakashi had given them a certain statistic: a sixty-six percent failure rate for this test. This number was fact. However, with two bells, there was a possibility of the failure rate dropping to thirty-three percent. Probability determined this statement to be a possible fact. Knowingly or not, their sensei had contradicted himself, and continued to do so. Just now, he'd said 'at the very least,' so it was a possibility that all of them could end up tied to logs, indicating a hundred percent failure rate, and then negated his previous sentence by adding that a person, singular, would return to the Academy. Back to thirty-three percent. Kassien watched their sensei, but nothing could be gleaned from the single eye he allowed them to see. The numbers confused her. Had Kakashi been faithful to his fact from yesterday afternoon, he would have brought one bell, not two. He would not have brought up the possibility that all of them could fail.

Kassien rubbed her palms against her thighs. Maybe she was overthinking this. She tended to do so when she was nervous. It was possible he'd made a mistake in pronouns when he spoke, but for a man who could set up an alarm clock and lunch boxes without them knowing he was there, it seemed highly unlikely. That, and the numbers he'd spouted, both directly and through his words, did not make sense. Was she so paranoid she was reading dishonestly in the inconsistency of pronouns?

 _Only nine of the twenty-seven graduates will continue onto the field,_ Kakashi had said yesterday, leaning into the roof's ledge as he marked their collective horror and disbelief with a single dark eye. _The rest will be sent back to the Academy._ Did Kakashi mean out of the nine teams tested, only three teams of three would pass? Or did he mean that only one student out of every team tested would pass? If the latter were true, then why did he say that those who took the bells—with the possibility of that number being two—would pass, rather than one? Would he then conduct another test, until only one of them was left? And when would they get their results of this exam? Did all the Jonin meet to discuss and compare potential Genin, or was it instantaneous? And then there was the fact that, given Iruka-sensei's statement the day before about Team Nine already being commissioned, only one team had passed their survival training last year. Supposing that the situation of last year's Genin hopefuls had been similar, the fact that only one team had passed dropped the passing rate to a much smaller percentage. Now that she thought about it, Kassien wondered where Kakashi had gotten sixty-six percent. Unless last year's graduation class had been abnormally small, she didn't see where the number could have factored in. Kassien frowned, confusion a distracting fog that sludged through her thoughts. She wanted to trust the information she'd been provided with, but she couldn't help the feeling as though she hadn't been given everything. The numbers didn't add up. Given what was known and what she'd figured out, either Kakashi was ill-informed (unlikely as an active Jonin of Konoha), or he'd been lying or deliberately misleading.

But what was the lie? What did the man leave out?

They stood beneath the fluttering canopy of a single tree, three Genin half pressed into stances of battle before a man bearing experience and knowledge under the hood of a single eye, each lesson scratched into silver hand guards glinting in cool relief atop black, fingerless gloves. Naruto shook beside her, fists clenched. The Uchiha mirrored this agitation with muted detail. Had they also detected Kakashi's lie?

"You can use your shuriken," Kakashi continued. "You won't succeed unless you're prepared to kill me."

Naruto snickered, folding his arms behind his head. "I'll have a bell in no time. You couldn't even dodge a chalkboard eraser!"

Unease swept through Kassien at this declaration. She wasn't so sure this task would be as simple as Naruto predicted. Jonin were highly skilled, highly respected members of Konoha, and were given the more trying of missions to complete (check: assassinations, infiltration, interrogation, elite protection detail, etc.). Her father had been a Jonin, and people who knew who she was (read: the only daughter of Shoin Otawa) often stopped her on the street to ask after his health, to regale her wondrous and impossible tales of his heroism, to ask her to relate a simple hello. Based off these tales, Kassien knew taking the bells from Kakashi would be no small feat. She would either have to be extremely sneaky, or figure out a way to overwhelm him.

Kakashi glanced her way before returning to the demon. "In my experience," he said, voice dipping perilously into boredom, "those who aren't skilled enough tend to bark the loudest. Just ignore the Dead Last and start when I say—"

Naruto's shaking peaked, and Kassien turned as the demon flipped a kunai in his hand, knuckles tight enough to splinter around the hilt as he rushed toward their sensei with an outraged shout. One heartbeat, he'd stepped from his place between her and the Uchiha. The next, he'd been completely turned around, huffing his anger into the muggy air, eyebrows scrunched in both ire and bewilderment. And there was Kakashi, one gloved hand twisted in Naruto's hair, the other tight around Naruto's wrist, wrenching his little arm behind his head to point the kunai at the back of his neck. Kassien hadn't seen the man move.

"Slow down," Kakashi said mildly. "I didn't even say 'go,' yet."

Naruto's eyes flickered back and forth. The Uchiha's face had twisted into something new, a satisfaction that pulled upward at his lips, twisting his usual distaste for the world into an intent that ignited his flint eyes. And as she watched the excitement rise in the boy, Kassien couldn't help but remember the Academy, and how most of the female portion of the class would follow him around. She honestly didn't understand it. This boy scared her. Who the hell was excited by the idea of fighting an opponent clearly above their own level? All Kassien could think about was how she might die today.

"Well, it seems like you're prepared to attack with the intent to kill," Kakashi said, releasing his grip on the demon. He gave his strange, expressionless smile. "I think I'm beginning to like you guys."

Kassien had to retract her previous statement. Clearly, she was the only sane one here.

"Ready?" Kakashi asked.

 _No,_ she thought, but tensed anyway, bent into a half squat that warmed the muscle of her thighs. She regretted not stretching earlier.

Kakashi's eye widened dramatically. "Go!"

Power flushed from her midriff to her feet, releasing as she pushed from the ground and propelling her up and away, the cloudless expanse of blue opening up behind and in front of her, above the stretching leaves of trees, her core coiled tight and limbs steady. Dense humidity pressed at her back, denying her acceleration any further. As she exhausted the height of the jump she allowed gravity to do its work, forcing her down to land nimbly on a branch. She crouched low to absorb the impact. Quietly, Kassien prowled from branch to branch, switching trees with just the lightest taps of chakra, rounding the clearing until she came upon a more favorable angle, keeping the man in sight all the while.

Now, how was she going to do this? Settled within the folds of a tree overlooking the small open area at least ten feet, if not more, above the man's head, Kassien had the rare advantage of being able to keep an eye on her enemy without his knowledge of her position. He hadn't moved since they started, shoulders rolled inward to hide his hands in his pockets, more or less a dark pillar with fine hair like needles raking the sky. The bells gleamed innocuously from his right hip. It seemed so easy. All she would have to do would be to fall on him from this height, stun him with the unexpected descent of her weight, and take the bells.

And yet . . . they didn't make just anyone Jonin. Her plan would be enough to trick a civilian, or a particularly unobservant Genin. But a Jonin? It was far more likely the man would sense her before she hit him. He would simply step aside, allowing gravity to do its work for him, shoving air from her lungs as her ribs creaked beneath her stupidity. Or he would pluck her from the air and toss her aside, and she'd tumble through the brush, scraped by bushes and trees with branches like nails trying to get a good grip before momentum thrust her further from reach. He could kick up with no effort, bruising her stomach and pride. He could reach up and clasp the throat of her jacket and guide her to the ground with added force. He could reach up and crush her throat.

Kassien's fingers looped around the fabric at her neck, pads skimming the length of her throat before squeezing tight, pulling at the collar until it no longer slunk to her skin. She swallowed. Despite her position, hidden amongst the leaves, Kassien felt she did not have any advantage at all.

"Is there something wrong with you?"

Kassien's hand slipped from the bark. It bit roughly at her palm. Teeth clenched around a surprised hiss, she shook her wrist to discourage pain, which throbbed to the staccato beat set by her heart. For the slightest of moments, Kassien believed the man had spoken to her. That, after all her care to remain unseen, to hide the rustle of her clothes and the tapping of chakra beneath the dull creak of trees shifting under the sun's attention, he'd still noticed her.

She needn't have worried. Naruto stood meters before the man, orange jumpsuit impossibly brighter under the glaring day, face slick with the polished grit that came with heat and direct sunlight and far too much time outdoors. The red swirl stitched onto the back of his jacket drew the eye like a target. His brow, previously furrowed in the sharp slant of determination, smoothed as he straightened from his crouch.

"What are you talking about?" the demon asked.

"You know, in there." Kakashi rapped his knuckles at his uncovered temple. "You're a little off."

Ire scored the demon's cheeks raw. "The only thing off around here is the one with the word 'fuck' in front of it!"

Kassien expected many things of their sensei at this moment: for a lone eye to slit like a gaping wound in his face, darkened by the shadow caused by another's impertinence; for a voice to shatter its mild bindings and tremble with the anger of a powerful man slighted; for the inevitable bruise blood to pool just beneath the skin from a quick, corrective move or two guided by shards of thought behind a face of stone. She expected this and more—insubordination was not tolerated among the ninja ranks—and yet, Kakashi did none of these things. He merely scratched at his mask.

"I guess I deserved that," Kakashi stated. It sounded thoughtful, but the sole circle of himself he'd allowed others to see was smooth and pale. Unreadable.

Naruto grinned, teeth bared and glistening like a dog's before the hunt. "Ha! So you do know your place!" The demon fisted a kunai, but he didn't rush forward as he did before. "Bow down before the greatness of Naruto Uzumaki!"

Panic slickened Kassien's palms and sent quick pricks to the soles of her feet. _So demons lack self-preservation,_ she noted, sweat unpleasantly cold as it slid from her temple and over the curve of her cheek, clinging briefly to her chin before dropping down her shirt. She could never be so bold.

Annoyance dropped over their sensei's exposed eye. "Careful," was all he said. Calmly. Firmly. The words cut into their banter and effectively separated their discussion as thought sinew from bone, scraped so clean that nothing had been left to pick at. A tense hush ushered in between them, short and dense. Kakashi remained very still, eye hard. Uncertainty tweaked at Naruto's not-smile—the first falter in his confidence Kassien had ever seen—but he did not drop his weapon.

After a long minute Kakashi brightened, aggression slumping from his shoulders not unlike unloading a heavy pack, and rummaged within the protection of his flak jacket. Naruto perked in equal interest and anticipation. Kassien swallowed. Because the man hadn't a sword or a hammer strapped to his back, Kassien had dismissed the possibility of the man being a weapons expert. But, Kassien amended as the search continued, that really didn't mean anything. Kakashi wouldn't have to be an expert to gut them. Didn't Naruto realize the danger he was in? Why didn't he run? Better yet, why didn't Naruto take advantage of Kakashi's inattention and attack him?

Why didn't Kassien, for that matter?

The man made a noise of triumph, wielding a rectangle slightly larger than his hand like he would a sword. It matched Naruto's jumpsuit perfectly, from the exact shade of orange to the target on its back cover. Kassien blinked. That wasn't any weapon Kassien had heard of. It wasn't until Kakashi opened it to reveal sunburned pages that Kassien realized it was not a weapon at all.

"That's a _dirty book!"_ the demon declared, pointing at the object in question.

The man looked up, a smile crinkling in the corner of his eye. "Why, Naruto! I didn't know you were a fan!"

" _No way!"_ Horror peeled back the demon's eyelids as he made an 'X' with his arms. "Those books are totally weird! Why would a guy ever want to do that to a lady?"

Something bubbled within Kakashi's chest, but it was quickly suppressed as the man cleared his throat and turned another page. It wasn't a noise normally associated with a seasoned Jonin. For the first time in her life, Kassien wondered if she was the victim of a bizarre dream. It was an odd, unfamiliar feeling.

Naruto's repulsed stare folded into outrage as he regained his purpose. "Hey!" he shouted, striking his kunai in the air as though it could stir the clouds. "This isn't the time for reading! You're supposed to be fighting me!"

"Go ahead," Kakashi said. "It won't make any difference against you guys. And I really want to know what happens next."

With those few, well-placed words Kakashi had cemented Naruto's resolve, driving the demon into a forward attack that even a blind man could dodge, so loud was Naruto's cry—anxiety crept up her spine, itching across her shoulder blades and down to her hands—the demon swiped at Kakashi's face, but the man merely caught his much smaller wrist and squeezed, instantly disarming him—her hands shook—the man absently pocketed the kunai and flipped a page in his book—breaths quick and thin like prey—Naruto's face wrinkled with hate and he kicked out—she was prey—only to miss when the man crouched low on his heels, nose still buried between the pages—she would be found eventually, so close was she to the man—this only served to aggravate Naruto, and his strikes became faster and wilder, the man dodging each one effortlessly—she would die on this branch—sometimes interposed by that disturbing, high-pitched giggle that really shouldn't come from a fully grown man—and Naruto would surely die alone on the training field where was the Uchiha she didn't know where the Uchiha was and why did she think the Uchiha would come to Naruto's aid they hated each other—until Kakashi appeared behind the demon, still crouched, book tucked under one arm as both extended before him, hands clasped together save for the thumb and pointer fingers, melded together at the tips. Sign of the Tiger. Kassien's eyes widened. Most techniques beginning or endings with that particular hand sign did not bode well for the target. Surely their sensei wouldn't kill Naruto?

"Secret Finger Jutsu!" the man stated, shadows cloaking his words with dark intent. Hard emotion grappled with his eye. "One Thousand Years of Death!"

The demon had only enough time for his eyes to bug in realization before the man struck, swooping underneath his stance and pushing up with his melded hands, consequently launching Naruto into the air from the seat of his pants. Naruto's shriek cleared the skies of all sound. Crows flocked together and away, squawking their displeasure. The man stood and placed one hand on his hip, the other using his little orange book to shield his face from the sun as he watched Naruto drop into a nearby lake. Kassien licked her lips. This man was _playing_ with Naruto. The demon her father so hated and feared. If Kakashi could defeat him with such ease, neither she nor the Uchiha stood a chance.

 _Never underestimate the enemy_ , her father told her one night, back when she was eight and smaller and much too cold, sickness clogging her every breath to a thin whistle as she listened to her father attempt to talk her to sleep. An old blanket stretched with years coddled her with sweet flowers and the warm dust of hay, snuggling against her neck and ears, and if her nose began to red with chill she could duck it into the warmth bunched in her hands, and all would be right in the world. Her father's voice a balm to her misery, very much like the blanket protecting her all itchy and warm, but she couldn't sleep because rather than bore her the glory days of the Great Shoin Otawa ignited something within her, eyes glassy before the hearth and so awed she wanted to be just like him, able to protect her friends and her village and everyone within it because she was just that strong. And eventually she did go to sleep. Dreamt strange things only fevers could imagine. And then woke up, and the world was no longer a warm and cozy adventure her father had reworked for her ears. The sky had whipped her with its unforgiving chill when she stepped out the front door. She remembered she needed to have friends first, before she could protect them. But her father's voice remained, his lessons the rulebook to her life, and she let them soothe the anxiety coiling in her shoulders like a blanket siphoning the frost from her bones.

 _I can do this_ , she decided, hands tremulous on the bark as she leaned forward, peering through the leaves down to the clearing below. It was difficult, like trying to peer through her own fingers grasping her face, but they eventually shifted to give her a workable vision of an astonishing amount of Narutos fighting amongst one another, grasping onto bright hair and pulling it from the scalp, small fists coloring slick faces with brown and purple smudges that sometime split and wept red, outrage painting each expression and word. The fact that Naruto had previously struggled with making clones itched at her mind (never mind clones that could _fight—_ they never learned _this_ at the Academy), but it failed to eclipse the worrying observation that she could no longer see Kakashi.

"Hello," a voice said mildly from beside her.

Kassien spun on the balls of her feet, bark pricking at one knee while the other held up her heaving chest, palms a protective barrier before her crouching opponent. He was much bigger than she, shoulders broad against shadowed branches stretching up and around them both, one arm across bent knees, pale fingers sprouting from palms gloved in pitch keeping the orange book hostage and open in a lackadaisical pinch. The other fell in a straight line over his knee, hand relaxed before his exposed toes. Tinted almost blue in shadow, his hair drooped slightly over his covered eye, softer than the needles they had appeared in sunlight.

He wriggles his fingers at her. "You're in my tree," he said.

The courage she'd tentatively worked up scattered like the sound of a clap. She licked her lips, tasting bitter dread. The bells dangled from his hip, partially hidden by a wrinkle in his pants as they peered over the side of the branch. When her sight returned to his face, there was a knowing glint in his single eye.

"You know," Kakashi said, using the same tone that had insulted Naruto, "Bad things happen to the inattentive ninja. You could be killed. Or trapped."

His mild voice melted into a rumble like the earth shifting before her feet until it faded beyond her hearing and into the whisper of the shadows behind him, and his face followed suit: sole eyelid sagging until it covered his eye and further still, pale skin rolling with the enthusiasm of a small ocean until the pressure tore fissures in his face that leaked a dark, lurid substance in lines to his shoulder, slow and thick as wax down a lit candle, pooling at the edge of his mask and streaking down raised grooves that must have been his nose, his lip, his chin, to spot his flak jacket. Kassien couldn't focus enough to try and guess at the features the dark wax had blurred, breathing tight and thin and heart a tantrum kicking at her ribcage, and Kakashi suddenly burst into feathers and leaves and multicolored particles that swirled around her and out towards town, but there was no town or Kakashi or training ground, just her all alone before the rushing stretch of darkness tugged impatiently at her jacket, pressing at her cheeks and teasing dark curls free of its agreement to keep out of her face, enforced by her elastic. She was falling towards something she could only feel. The fight in her chest pulsated at her temple, her fingertips, her wrist, her neck—unpleasant and distracting, and she willed it to stop. Her stomach throbbed, sickness searing up her throat as though it had grown a sword to protect itself, pushing everything within her apart until squished flat enough to make room for its protector, but some of her insides had crawled into her mouth, tubular and slimy, wriggling like the fattest worm as it excreted a foul rot inside her. Kassien pressed her fingers to her lips. She knew if she opened her mouth she'd expel the cord pushing against her teeth, but if she did that she'd suffocate as it hastily escaped her, and she couldn't let that happen because her insides were meant to be _inside_ her, not down her front and at her feet like a child's scribbles, and if that happened she would cease to live and she'd most definitely fall from this tree—

Kassien blinked. Her body pulsed with a distracting fervor. She was falling into nothing and her body was rejecting everything that kept her alive. She was crouched in a tree, three fingers pressing closed lips into submission while a forth dug into her cheek. The wind pulled her face to her ears, eyelids taut, but it was too hot for wind like this. Her feet held solid upon a rough surface, ankles a tremor that rolled up her legs. She felt like throwing up.

Shakily, Kassien reached behind her and into the pouch she'd attached to her hip, palming a kunai she couldn't see. Cool with inactivity, the kunai nearly slipped from her grasp as her wrists gave another unsettling pulse. She cemented her resolve. Pain dripped from her right thigh, tugging sharply at the point of insert, and the illusion was broken. Kassien blinked into shadows cast by strong, winding branches, light but patches of ragged bark that shifted in patterns determined by the overlapping of leaves above. Kakashi's voice was a distant mumble behind her. Close, but not an immediate problem. She was alone. Her hands shook, and she curled them at her sides. She hated Genjutsu.

The world tilted, lines sturdy with the confidence of their place rotating to accommodate speed and perspective as the ground rushed toward her palms. At the last moment she righted herself, heart in her throat, feet first. She hit the ground hard, right leg buckling beneath her as pain stretched along her thigh, pulling taut at the kunai point piercing through her pants and skin, nestled between the wiry strands of a muscle group. _Lucky,_ she thought to herself as blood curled around the metal before slipping down her leg, a sick warmth absorbed by fabric before it reached the bandages beneath her knee.

 _You want to be a ninja?_ her father asked her one night, nostalgia but a blunt edge. _Then expect pain._

Kassien nodded and quickly unraveled the bandages at her knee, panic casting glances over her shoulder to the open field behind her. The Uchiha was trying his hand now, hits hard enough to echo through the trees, weaving around the brush she currently hid behind as she wrapped fingers around the hilt of her kunai. With the slightest of hesitations Kassien pulled the kunai from her thigh, wiped the tip of nearly translucent gore, and wrapped her leg tightly. She tucked the kunai into the lip of her sandal and ducked behind the brush skimming at her back, curling fingers around branches and pulled them stiffly apart. With no small amount of trepidation she watched as two gloved hands pulled the Uchiha underground, solid earth rotating like windmill spires as it shifted to accommodate the intrusion of another body, crumbling beneath a chin taut with ire, black eyes spearing the man with hatred. Kakashi merely flicked two fingers lazily over his shoulder as he strolled into the tree line across the way. Kassien was not fooled. She knew she was next. She'd made too much noise when she landed.

Dread greased the walls of her stomach, sour and sickly. Her leg hurt more now, and she ignored it with a grimace, limping away from the Uchiha. Unkempt grass brushed between exposed toes, annoying in its itch but comforting in its reality, softening each step to just a muffle at the edge of her perception. Unsure of her destination, Kassien pushed passed the trees one by one. Spindly fingers of low bushes snagged at her ruined pants. The earth seemed to knock at her soles, as though asking for permission (for what?), and her pulse points throbbed with a ghost of its power. She clenched her fists. She _hated_ Genjutsu.

At the edge of the wood, Kassien skid to a stop on her heels. Her opponent stood before her, a black void scoring the blur of emerald and blue shimmering under daylight. Despite his attire, the man appeared unbothered by the sun's glare.

"That's an unconventional way to escape a Genjutsu," Kakashi remarked, gesturing to her right leg. Red blotted her bandages. "Painful."

Fear held Kassien's tongue. It sounded almost like an inquiry, but she really couldn't tell. Something tacky suctioned her tongue to the roof of her moth. She didn't think she could speak even if she wanted to.

Kakashi's hand was chest level now, two fingers straight while the others curled into his palm. "Let's make a deal," he said. "Defeat me, and I'll teach you something new. I'll even let you choose the lesson. You've already encountered Genjutsu, so which would you prefer: Taijutsu or Ninjutsu?"

Distrust prickled down Kassien's spine. Defeat him? Kassien thought she only had to get the bells (and even this she doubted, vaguely recalling her thoughts from earlier). Was this man being purposefully obtuse?

"Have you made your choice?" he asked, but Kassien wasn't listening. The earth thrummed beneath her feet, sending light pulses that tickled along her metatarsals, and Kassien realized she had another option. It was something she'd only done a few times before. It knocked at her soles, asking for permission once more. She stood still, unthinking, hardly breathing, allowing the earth's energy to swirl from the flats of her feet to her knees and upwards still, soothing the ache in her thigh with a cool caress before swooping through her abdomen, up her throat and around her shoulders. It tingled in her fingers. She felt a little calmer with this presence in her mind, and relief was the barest of smiles on her face.

Kakashi tilted his head in question, but she'd only a moment to process this before power swelled within her, and she allowed the earth to do what it wanted since she fell from the tree. It swallowed her whole.

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 **Updated: September 2017**


	3. The Bell Test, Part II

**(Ducks from behind food splattered curtain) Hello, friends! (Screams without dignity and hides behind the curtain as tomatoes of the rotten variety hurl through the air with the same velocity as Jonin-wielded kunai.)**

 **But in all seriousness, I have returned, and with a completed chapter. Huzzah! It only took me a few days of intense focus and Maria Brink screaming at me to shut up about a thousand times. No real excuses for my absence except angry denial about lost chapters (basically the five ending ones…what a drag) and three jobs…well.**

 **(Coughs. Then chugs a gallon of water because screaming is hard work)**

 **Let's get to it, shall we?**

 **Disclaimer: Sasuke looks so much like his mother it's creepy. Mikoto Uchiha is the hardest character for me to watch because of it.**

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Chapter Three: The Bell Test, Part II

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The first time the ground hid Kassien, she'd been four and lost and so very terrified. Konoha was very far away, someone had told her, and that meant home was very far away, and she couldn't find Daddy, where was Daddy? Strange, unfamiliar faces kept pressing close and talking in voices pitched high and sweet because they _knew_ she was alone—that's how grown-ups always talked when she was with Daddy and they didn't know her and thought they could pretend to be little like her, but she knew better because someone tall like Daddy could never be little like her—and they didn't know Daddy, all she wanted was Daddy—and suddenly she wasn't toddling along unfamiliar streets with the unfamiliar faces but sitting next to the caravan, blinking underneath a sun that pressed a hot and heavy hand atop her head as though commanding that she _stay there._ The fear trembling within her made it easier to obey, and she leant against the sturdy wheel spokes, tired and shaking and not a little bit sad. Earth had dusted her arms and legs, and she plucked at the hem of her shirt to inspect the filth there. She hadn't any idea why she was so messy, but then Daddy's friend was there and smiling and turning to talk over his shoulder: "Shoin, she's right here," and Kassien was smiling too because Daddy was Shoin and everything was right in the world. Years had peeled this memory away until it was nothing but a vague recollection of sitting underneath the unrelenting push of sun with Daddy's shirt tied around her head, hands sticky with a bitter ice snack she always managed to get dirty, until it happened again, not even three years later, and under entirely different circumstances.

Nevertheless, it came to no surprise to Kassien that she could use the earth in this way, though she had yet to determine why this ability was decidedly random, only manifesting at a whim usually discordant from her own. Still, Kassien had never been one to complain, especially to deeds of good fortune. The transition was quick. Soil broke beneath her feet, opening like hands in the anticipation of something precious, sucking greedily at her toes. She fell instantly into its grasp, the forest and black-clad legs of her opponent blurring before she craned her neck for one last look at the sky: blue smearing between reaching fingers of branches that swayed overhead, pitch blotting out the cheerful day until she had the good sense to close her eyes. The temperature had dropped significantly; a chilled damp that rubbed over the sweat that protected her body in a slick film until it dried to a thin paste on her skin. Grit rubbed beneath her eyelids, only a prick of annoyance compare to the tender line searing along her thigh. She forcefully removed the discomfort from her focus. Survival training. The bells. Kassien breathed in, dust a sharp and bitter damp cloying her lungs. She curled around the urge to cough. Focus.

The tingling that once teased at her legs now faintly buzzed beneath her skin. Soil cuddled her every movement, scrubbing fondly at whatever her conservative apparel did not cover as though she was a favored pet. Although disorienting at first, she slowly adjusted to the blindness, the shallow air dusting her lungs, the sudden cold that breathed into her jacket with the purpose of teasing gooseflesh into awareness along covered arms.

Calmer away from the pressure of the sun on her back, Kassien could now recognize the shivering earth around her as vibrations from above ground, trickling through roots stubbornly entangled in the distance, resonating off the smallest of rocks and seeping through skin now entirely saturated in a tingling not unlike when waking from a deep sleep to discover her body had yet to catch up with her mind. Worms wriggled with sluggish purpose along the more fragile roots of grass and the stray weed, stretching tall for the sun as it wavered under the duress of an occasional wind. An animal the size of her fist burrowed restlessly on the other side of the clearing. There was a more concentrated buzzing nearby, and Kassien realized with utmost revulsion that she was unfavorably close to an underground nest of bees.

Momentarily lost in horror, Kassien nearly missed the crumple of grass, the press of a careful, silent stride slipping through the soil not unlike water from cupped hands. If she had any doubts about the power of Kakashi Hatake before, they would have now been completely obliterated by what she could feel standing three feet above her head and slightly to the left. He was difficult to sense—the barest of a flicker, almost lost amongst the shivering grass and the distracting movements of animals nesting alongside her underground. But, if she concentrated on the quiet strain of crushed grass, she had a decent idea of his position. A hand swiped along the grass where she once stood, sending a swoop of vibrations that circled wider and fainter until they too were lost amongst nature.

". . . Ninjutsu it is . . ." Kakashi muttered, the words nearly completely absorbed by the layers of earth above her.

Blinded by the cover of soil, Kassien slowly navigated her way underground, using the barest vibrations of power as a guide. It was difficult work, distracted by the burrowing animals and dancing roots and the preening stalks of green flora as they cycled through rays of sunlight, but she somehow managed, brow furrowed as she concentrated on the task at hand. Earth filtered easily between her fingers, shifting to accommodate her every movement without disturbing the life enriching the soil, brushing along her clothes and snuggling under once clean nailbeds. Kakashi had not moved except to stand. Kassien shuffled through the earth, stopping once she was directly beneath the steady trickle of power—noticeably different from the natural vibrations around her, which circled in almost predictable patterns and dissipated once beyond her reach. Kakashi's chakra, actively concealed, flickered almost too quickly to track, branching off in different directions before flitting away. Untraceable. It was almost bizarre. Even the worms circling thick tree roots left a trail. She wondered if this was true for all humans, or if it was unique only to Kakashi.

Stale air filtered through lungs that quivered with every thud of her heart. She swallowed her nerves. Focused on what she could do. With a steadying breath, Kassien crouched low, gathering power in her thighs. Before Kassien could convince herself of how stupid her plan was, she pushed straight up, power flushing through her system as she extended her arms and legs. Soil rushed around her body, becoming increasingly less rocky as she punched completely through the topsoil, fists opening into a surprising breath of heat before closing around a pair of thin ankles.

"Oh?" Interest saturated that single syllable. He was a little more coherent in her proximity. "A quick study?"

Kassien had wanted to use her connection to the earth to yank him down with her—as he had the Uchiha earlier—but he remained unresponsive to her attempts. The flitting of power beneath his feet never faltered. It was akin to attempting to displace a building. She made a mistake. Her hands clenched tighter around leather and sturdy bone. This wasn't working. A large hand closed around the fabric at the back of her neck and pulled up. Earth crumbled from her shoulders, biting the ground with soft thumps. She blinked stinging grit from her eyes, and a piercing ache stabbed its way through her corneas as she became reacquainted with daylight. Even brighter under direct sun, Kakashi's hair was difficult to look at. She squinted into a single dark eye that glimmered as she hung at his mercy from the scruff of her jacket, legs kicking helplessly at the air. Fabric gathered uncomfortably under her armpits.

Kakashi tilted his head. Though his eye did not close, the delicate skin around it crinkled in the far corner.

"Did you copy me?" he asked. He sounded terribly amused.

The day's heat blanketed her cooled skin. Kassien coughed. A wet clump of dirt plopped onto her tongue, and she swallowed it back.

 _In battle_ , Kassien recalled from years ago, first said by a knowledgeable Iruka-sensei in front of a relatively sleepy class, _a ninja is either on the offensive or defense. Both can be used to the advantage, given a ninja is patient._ While Iruka-sensei in the past detailed the advantages and disadvantages of each position on the field—a little Kassien taking notes with a stiff back and the occasional nod—Kassien realized rather abruptly her Academy teacher did not explain what she needed to do during a stalemate. Kakashi still held her up, and with distant awe Kassien marveled at this subtle display of strength; though he had yet to release her, Kakashi's arm never wavered. Kassien swallowed. The bells glimmered in the corner of her eye, tied to his right hip. What could she possibly do against an opponent like this?

But . . . they weren't in a stalemate, were they? Although the usual dance of assault and deflection had been abated into this stagnation, Kassien had no scruples about her true abilities when compared to that of a Jonin: it didn't matter that they were in a period of what textbooks labeled as Strategic Assessment; as the stronger, more experienced ninja, Kakashi held a significant advantage over her.

So what was he waiting for?

Fear sapped strength from her limbs, each tremor inducing a further weightlessness not entirely linked to her disconnect from the ground. Jacket seams began to pinch under her arms, discouraging circulation. Although sinking back into the ground for an indefinite future was Kassien's preferred plan of action, she knew, even without added emphasis from Kakashi's cheerful eye, that her desires were far from plausible. From what Kassien understood, her options were limited. Kakashi's, however, were not. He could tighten his grasp on the back of her jacket until she either fainted or died by asphyxiation; toss her back into the woods from which she came, where she would slide to an eventual stop, skinned by the friction of rocks and dry soil and a thousand twigs with tips like claws, or crash headfirst into the unyielding armor of the nearest tree; crush her windpipe with his unoccupied hand, which currently rested on his hip above the soundless bells; knock her unconscious with a quick thrust from his palm, snapping her nose into an unnatural curve until she had the lucidity to correct it; place both hands on each side of her neck and give a sharp twist—

Kassien's heart fluttered with the same inconsistency as the wings of an airborne bird, and each breath through her nose thinned with likewise worry. Her thoughts seemed to float in the air beside her, no longer confined by the limitations of her skull but still lacking in freedom, disjointed and meaningless without proper grounding connections to keep them from skidding away. The possibilities of her failure were endless. They scattered her thoughts further, pushed away with each pulse of her heart, weak in her wrist, and blackness fogged the edges of her vision. The probability of her survival was not in her favor. Though it was unlikely he could read her thoughts—an ability only afforded to the Yamanaka—it was more than likely he could read her movements and predict certain outcomes. It was likely he could, if not hear her traitorous heart, hear each breath that stuttered between her lips in lieu of chattering. Ninja do not chatter their teeth. Ninja do not wring their wrists. Ninja do not have obvious tells of their fears or triumphs or of anything else because to have them would mean death. _Ninja rule number twenty-five: A ninja must never show their tears. Ninja rule number twenty-six: A ninja must never show weakness. Ninja rule number twenty-seven: A ninja must persevere through such weakness as though he has none—_

"Mah, you're a patient one," Kakashi remarked, and Kassien returned abruptly from her thoughts as his mild voice swept through her recitations. His grip at the back of her jacket never faltered, but he did jerk her up and down as though she weighed nothing more than the bells at his hip. The world shook before her. It was so bizarre Kassien's anxiety may as well have jumbled out her ears.

Kakashi tilted his head, and a rounded corner of bright sun rose from the glow of his hair, searing the black fog from her vision. "The boys wasted no time attacking me," he said, and the glee seemed to seep from his eye into his voice: "But you know that already, don't you, Stalker-san?"

Kassien blinked. Her mind cleared completely. _Stalker-san?_ she thought, confused. _How do I qualify as a stalker?_

"You take all the fun out of instigation, Kassien-kun," Kakashi sighed. He then quieted, syllables bouncing off one another in a petulant mutter: "So un-cute."

 _He wants me to fight him,_ Kassien realized suddenly. The man was attempting what Kassien now recognized as 'Mid-Fight Banter': a technique Iruka-sensei defined as both an assault and reconnaissance tactic, in which one has the potential to learn about an opponent's skillset as well as goad him or her into an offensive attack. Kiba had been rather fond of this tactic, Kassien recalled, and used it constantly during Academy spars. It had worked effectively against the demon earlier that morning. But it's also true that this tactic had no affect against certain opponents, such as Shikamaru Nara, who often sighed and looked at the clouds as though responding took more effort than he was willing to extend. Kakashi-sensei attempting the tactic now confused her. Did he want her to practice such tactics? She almost wanted to apologize for not participating, but then she remembered the exercise Kakashi-sensei had set for them this morning. Embarrassment stained the back of her neck and crept along her jaw with a slow burn. She nearly forgot her mission objective, despite her doubts about its legitimacy. _Ninja rule number four: A ninja must always put the mission first._

With a mind spurred by urgency (how long has it been since Kakashi-sensei set the alarm?), Kassien categorized her options. Her jacket wasn't baggy enough for her to simply slip out of (she would have to unzip herself from it, which would take much too long as she attempted to guide the metal zipper over dips and ridges with fingers slick with sweat and grit, and even if she managed without Kakashi catching on, there was still a good chance she would trap herself within inverted jacket sleeves). Judging by Kakashi's height she was at least a foot from the ground, so using it to regain her sense of balance remained outside her realm of possibilities. Kassien had strength enough to pull herself onto his arm, but she doubted he would release her no matter how she twisted his wrist. Really, Kassien thought as she brought her arching arms together in front of her stomach, she had only one choice.

A simple hand sign. A pinch within her, like a full body cramp. A brief interim of anticipation and doubt—would it work?—before blue day and green grass and the non-smiling man holding her above ground collapsed upon itself like closing a two-fold card. An instant of nothing; an empty void she slipped through like a crack in the floorboards, a space ignored or forgotten by the experienced in the usual urgency surrounding the necessity for kawarmi. Before she could wonder about it, the world popped open again. The momentary return of three dimensions nearly stunned her, the extent of the clearing stretching languidly below the yawning day enough to onset slight casadastraphobia. (Had the world always been this big?) Something shuddered within her, but the ground reassured her, pressing against her feet. Smoke swirled around her in a dissipating fog, similar to that snaking about Kakashi's outstretched arm, which scrambled to catch the single silver bell she'd managed to Switch herself with. Any doubt gripping her frame whittled to an afterthought as success breathed excitement into her lungs, and she became lightheaded with its presence. She reached out to the red string tied to Kakashi's hip, the bell winking at her just centimeters away. Her middle finger grazed the sturdy fabric at his hip.

Pale fingers snapped out quicker than she could track, cinching tightly around the entirety of her hand and tighter still, shifting metacarpals and phalanges to meet at an aching point, and flung her bodily away. The world stretched into a blur of color. She was stunned by the sheer speed at which she unwillingly travelled until she remembered herself and tucked her knees halfway to her chest, endeavoring to right herself in the air. This foreign velocity made for an awkward air roll, and Kassien's shoulder bit into dry soil, an impact that stung in a line down her side. She skidded across the ground, free arm crooked over her face to avoid the stinging debris of disturbed rocks and uprooted grass that slunk to her sticky skin in strands less irritable than the new scrape open on the back of her hand. Earth's sharp, musky scent gouged her nostrils as she rolled twice, the unexpected inertia hindering her process to stand.

(And briefly, adrenaline crashing through every anxiety dredged up in the duration of this test, she may have understood the Uchiha's smirk at the beginning of it all—so _this_ was the power of a Jonin. So _this_ was a possible future for her, should she survive into her twenties.)

Determination tingled in her fingertips, the resonance a direct match to the ground below her. Rolling onto her stomach, Kassien dug her fingers into the soil with surprising ease, using momentum leftover from her fall to thrust herself underground once more.

 _Quicker,_ she told herself, ducking her nose into the collar of her jacket—a temporary filter between her gasping breaths and the earth she now waded through. Her near success thrummed in her veins. _I have to be quicker._

Sprinting underground, Kassien found, was not all that much different from walking. Earth pressed around her, rocks occasionally escaping her control to scrape at her jacket, her legs, her bare hands as though threatening to bury her alive. Each breath stuttered in her lungs. She was winded in a way that physical activity had never managed, and her eyes itched in a manner not unlike when she read into the wee hours of the morning, passed her curfew. Kassien ignored her sudden exhaustion, just as she ignored the minor lesions gifted to her from the earth. Focused as she was on Kakashi's strangely sporadic chakra, Kassien hardly noticed the wildlife burrowing around her.

At last, sightless and out of breath, Kassien reached Kakashi's position. She punched up once more, exploding into the day in a shower of dirt, small rocks peppering the grass before melding back to what it once was. She'd misjudged her position—her arm fell short of her first punch, but she adjusted quickly and spun to catch the man in the abdomen with her heel. An arm of steel met her blow, and the staunch rejection of her attempt buzzed from her heel to the base of her spine. With a wrench of her lower abdominals she swung her leg back, both feet firmly on the ground before it swallowed her once more. _Even quicker,_ she told herself, shooting through the earth with a surge of will that burned along secondary pathways. She popped up on Kakashi's other side, each hit deflected seemingly before she even thought to land them. The bells danced tauntingly away from her fingertips as Kakashi retreated a step (and it was a curious thing to note the man hadn't moved before then, able to fend her off without resorting to anything more laborious than a bend at the elbow), and Kassien huffed to regulate her breathing once more. It was a bad habit she created for herself, not breathing during Taijutsu, and often despaired herself for its lack of correction (what a useless ninja she would be, to faint during a battle because she had forgotten to breathe). Kassien settled into her lunge, arms tucked close enough to her body for quick protection. Her toes had just begun the process of becoming one with the earth when a shrill rattle riddled holes through her focus. Kassien blinked, fingers relaxing into a natural curl as she recognized the noise as the clock alarm.

"Noon already?" Kakashi no longer looked her way, head tilted north. The alarm tapered into a silence that rebounded off the surrounding woods, and birdsong reluctantly twittered into existence to cover its shrill absence.

 _That's it?_ Kassien's shoulders heaved with every breath. Exertion traced a sickly path down her face, and Kassien siphoned it away with the underside of her sleeve. Mud speckled the fabric in a grainy smear. Adrenaline flaked off her, and what returned was something that gave her a different kind of shake. Spars were common in the Academy, but never had she even _thought_ to try something against as formidable of an opponent as a Jonin, but having done so, it left her with a new sense of appreciation, and a bit of foreboding. Now that she had graduated from the Academy, fighting opponents stronger and more experienced than her would soon become the norm. That is, if she managed to pass this impossible test. And as she straightened from her half crouch, she knew she hadn't.

"Come on," Kakashi said, already halfway across the clearing, hands in his pockets. "I've got an idiot to tie up."

Kassien hesitated for the briefest of moments, and with the briefest caress like a sigh down her leg, the earth's support left her. Her fingers and toes no longer tingled with new possibilities.

Disappointment was lead in her stomach. She had failed the mission. The test. She would not become a Genin this year. And she realized, as she followed Kakashi through a brush nearly taller than she, silver bells but a glimmer between the stalks, that the demon and the Uchiha had failed as well.

* * *

Kassien dug her heels into the ground and pushed her back into the rightmost training post, the muscle in her legs pulling impossibly tight. Grass like fine webs weaved between exposed toes. A notch in her spine attempted to whittle away at a kunai groove in the warped wood, and the waterproof material of her jacket slipped with a plastic rustle that occasionally broke into her thoughts, too thin to cushion the discomfort of a curved spine on a hard surface. The pain beneath rust-stained bandages had dulled, but a sting of its potential remained. Beside her Naruto struggled, strangled by an embrace of rope; thicker than Kassien's arm it bound his shoulders to the middle post, winding around his stomach and again at his hips, leaving his legs free to kick restlessly at the air. The Uchiha sat on his other side, ignoring both his teammates in favor of leveling a dark glower at their sensei, who surveyed them with an idle eye. Kakashi's head was tilted down and slightly to the left, and Kassien realized, with an epiphany dulled by the sense of failure, that the man was compensating for his blind spot.

"You guys kind of suck," the man happily informed them. Kassien curled around the truth as it burrowed between the spaces in her ribcage, slipping to pierce vulnerable organs. It was a familiar pain, having her observations confirmed, though she often wished it weren't so.

"You just got lucky!" Naruto insisted. While insults made Kassien more aware of her place in life, they seemed to only piss the demon off. It a most fascinating comparison. "Let me go, you stupid sensei!"

Kakashi hummed deep in his throat. "No, I don't think so."

Strain pulled taut at the defined line of Naruto's collarbone, only visible at the slip of rolled white fabric at his neck. "I'll totally kick your ass! Believe it!"

"I don't believe it," Kakashi said bluntly, hands in his pockets. Naruto choked a little—possibly because the ropes were too tight, but more likely because Kakashi had so staunchly denied Naruto a second chance. The demon squirmed a little against the post, orange sleeves bunching against rope as his arms struggled for purchase, little fingers scabbing at the bark. Before Naruto could edge in another word to defend himself, Kakashi's mild tone swept before them in a breath of carefully controlled patience: "In fact, I don't believe any of you should continue this line of work at all."

Kassien swallowed, the words a poison that clogged her throat and pricked at her eyes. It was one thing to be sent back to the Academy to repeat their final year, but it was another altogether to be told to quit their dreams before they truly had a chance to start realizing them. Shame was a knife in her chest, twisting failure further into her organs until it became too unbearable to ignore, its rot a burn up her esophagus to cover her tongue in a film of nausea she had no choice but to swallow. It faded to settle in her stomach, heavy like true illness. Her father would be so disappointed in her. She'd been training to be a ninja since before she could remember. The ninja rules were her catechism, recited constantly since she found her father's old ninja handbook until effectively stamped to her brain, only to pound through her veins with every beat of her heart. The years of dedication bled through each bruise and scrape earned, remaining as lessons to supplement the rules once callused over and healed. She'd only ever wanted to be a ninja. But the doubt lingered, pressed there ever since she first tried to kawarmi and failed, that maybe she wasn't good enough. And here she was, six years later, with her doubts confirmed. She _wasn't_ good enough. She would never be good enough. Perhaps it was a good thing Kakashi stopped her now before she failed herself on a larger scale, and failed her country as well.

When she'd managed to keep the bile of rejection to a dull simmer of resignation in her stomach, Kassien looked up from her contemplation of her pale toes to see the Uchiha had left his post and now lay sprawled beneath Kakashi's hold, both arms pinned to his back with one hand while a foot pressed the Uchiha's face into the dirt. Kassien blinked, but the image didn't disappear. The boy heaved, chest constricted by an adult's weight, a stuttering anger that huffed loose soil into the air and sent gravel skittering into the grass.

"What was your plan?" Kakashi murmured with idle curiosity. The Uchiha shifted with great difficulty, nose previously buried in the ground now free to huff greedily, saying nothing. Kakashi's head tilted as he considered the boy. "What were you hoping to achieve that you couldn't before?"

Black hair fell into the Uchiha's face, striking his cheek and nose and mouth. It did nothing to lessen the dark intent leaking from his eyes.

Kakashi did not let up. "You failed this test," he said gravely, "because you displayed characteristics undesirable in a ninja of Konoha. Sasuke." His voice grew sterner still. His foot pressed down on the Uchiha's head, and the boy gritted his teeth as his face attempted to become one with the ground. "You believed your teammates a hindrance, and your arrogance has no place on the field for one of your level. Naruto!" (Here, the demon started, blue eyes wide and mouth crooked with the discontent of one expecting a beating, but Kakashi continued relentlessly) "You lacked strategy and patience, and even forgot the mission objective! Kassien—"

A thrill of nerves forced its path to her already uneasy stomach. Kakashi's eye, though hooded, was hard.

"You surprised me," he admitted, "but you severely lack confidence in your execution, and your fear of failure hinders whatever decision-making skills you possess."

The truth this time was a slap to her entire being. It zipped along her skin and teased shame forth from her stomach, spreading its oil along her neck and cheeks, where the knowledge would continue to burn for hours. "I know," she whispered to her hands. She could not look Kakashi Hatake in the eye. She was a disgrace to the ninja way. She was a disgrace to the Otawa name.

"All of these things will get you killed," Kakashi continued, "but none more than the worrying fact that you—all of you—believed you could take a Jonin on your own."

And suddenly, Kassien understood. Despite the shame burning along her skin, despite the erroneous percentages and idle threats and last year's single graduating Genin team, Kassien knew what Kakashi had been trying to tell them all along.

The man shifted his weight to his back leg, still rooted to the ground, and released the iron clamp of his limbs around the Uchiha to stand straight once more. Sunlight carded glowing fingers through silver hair from his left, tainting individual strands until they shone almost white against the day. Hands in his pockets, Kakashi watched the three of them in turn. The Uchiha pushed himself up to his hands and knees, but made no further attempt to return to his post. Instead the boy stared at his hands, dark hair a partial curtain that shadowed his eyes but revealed a pale chin and the tip of his nose. A frown touched at the corners of his mouth. Naruto remained uncharacteristically silent, still for the first time since he'd been tied to the middle post.

"What was the purpose of this test?" Kakashi asked at last.

"To get the bells?" Naruto tried, hope an upward lilt in his words.

"No," Kakashi denied immediately.

"To display our abilities," the Uchiha stated, still on his hands and knees, but clearly listening.

"That's just a bonus."

"Teamwork," Kassien said quietly.

Kakashi smiled by closing his eye. "Yes."

The Uchiha's head snapped up, dark eyes a void that swallowed passion with the same greed as a tunnel did light. Naruto rolled his head to face her, but she didn't return the favor. She merely dug her heels further into the ground. Stupid. The information to draw this conclusion had been in front of her all along. She had just been too stupid, too slow, to see it.

"Had you worked together, it's possible the three of you could have taken the bells," Kakashi admitted.

Naruto squirmed uncomfortably, confusion slanting his open features sideways. "But, Sensei, there were only two bells—"

"Have you not been listening?" Kakashi demanded, annoyed. "This test was never about the bells! You have been set up from the start: the information your Chunin-sensei gave you yesterday, what you learned from me today, the appearance of inequality—everything was designed to pit you all against each other, to create conditions in which one's own interests aren't the issue. Those who could muddle through extraneous information, who could think for themselves and get over their differences to achieve a common goal . . . well, it's really too bad you could not. This was a mission simulation, and you all failed. Missions are completed in teams. While individual skill is important, it's teamwork that makes a ninja village successful. Individual actions that disrupt teamwork throw the team into crisis and lead to death."

Silence seeped between the Genin like daylight into the ground, settling into the soil as seeds to take root. Kakashi's solemn tone had blanketed the previous atmosphere of adrenaline aftershock and disbelief, effortlessly issuing a calm that commanded their immediate obedience, ending their fight and thoughts as a period at the end of a silence. It demanded respect. Thoughtfulness. Her earlier shame had finally simmered into a manageable itch. Kakashi eyed them all individually before turning his back and ambling with slow purpose to the large, kunai-shaped slab of obsidian. Silver etchings of ninjas past shimmered faintly with distance.

"This is the Memorial Stone," Kakashi stated needlessly. His voice was a dull kunai, blunt and lackluster but still retaining the potential to hurt with enough force. The slender reed of his form blocked most of the stone from view, and his head tilted downward, exposing a sliver of pale skin between his flak jacket and the needle bed of hair pinned beneath the knotted strap of his forehead protector. There was a long pause. He could have been paying his respects, but it was equally as likely he was idly pursuing the stone for dramatic effect. At last he said, "The greatest heroes of Konoha are immortalized here."

"Im—immortalized?" Naruto stumbled over the word, craning his neck as though it would allow him a closer look.

"It means their names are on the stone, Idiot," the Uchiha snorted, now leaning against the leftmost post with his shoulder, arms crossed as he regarded their sensei with open contempt.

Excitement pulled Naruto's mouth nearly apart, but Kassien couldn't help but add to the Uchiha's explanation. "It means they're dead, Naruto," she whispered to the demon. "They gave their lives for the village."

Naruto's smile instantly faded into a heady disquiet, eyes flickering away. His body radiated a heavy, instant remorse.

"My best friend is on this stone," Kakashi said. He then glanced over his shoulder, dark eye both assessing and curious. "I'll give you one more chance."

* * *

Kakashi has had only two team photos done in his lifetime: the first, when he was five and apprenticed to Minato-sensei; the second, when Obito and Rin graduated from the Academy four years later. Small, Chunin, and three years into a strict disciplinary regimen he'd set for himself, Kakashi had protested that team ad nauseum: he'd recited laws dating back to the Shodaime, protocol he'd dug up from the library and memorized to subsection letters, quotes from the extensive and kindling-dry _The History of the Ninja_ series to illustrate how putting a Chunin apprentice on a permanent Genin squad Was Never Done. Ever. Minato-sensei had only been increasingly amused by Kakashi's efforts to settle his problem diplomatically, to his chagrin; _There isn't protocol for a five-year-old Genin, either, Kashi-kun,_ the man would say. Then pat his head, give him a kunai, and hustle him along. Until then, Kakashi had managed to avoid mind-numbing D-ranks, having been much too young to grocery shop or child mind, but not too young to kill. Though he hadn't realized it then, Minato-sensei had been at that age in which his own mortality was but an abstract concept left to scholars, tackling the impossible with a keen mind and a fierce belief in his abilities. Young and entrenched in the war as he was, Minato-sensei did not see a problem having a toddler tag along to assassinations. His father did not. Nor, certainly, did the council, a group of retirees and civilians that favored things that now crippled Kakashi in remembrance, though there had been one notable occasion in which the Sandomine shouted himself hoarse when Minato-sensei sheepishly reported almost leaving Kakashi behind in Lightning after a risky infiltration as 'father' and 'son.' Genius as the man had been, he tended to lean toward absent-minded when reworking a theory. Minato-sensei had been distracted by storm clouds that day. Three years later, he'd developed a technique that twisted innards and blasted legions of men across the battlefield.

"Why is this necessary?"

That voice was both too young and hard to be Minato-sensei, who spoke his words with a quiet power none dared contradict. Kakashi blinked away the cobwebs of his past. Familiar words once crisp and black now faded with oil and dirt and the less than friendly kiss of sunlight materialized into his current reality, realization a slick tar on his tongue and down his throat. Nostalgia was a rare experience for Kakashi, and not one he particularly enjoyed. By definition, nostalgia afforded the afflicted sentimental feelings for past events, but for Kakashi, whose childhood was defined by grief and horror, he felt that there must be something very wrong for him to yearn for a war-torn Konoha while living almost comfortably in peacetime. Besides, nostalgia prompted social sharing—something he could not do. Everyone he'd either befriended or looked up to were dead.

Shielding the majority of his face with his book, Kakashi glanced down—something Kakashi supposed he'd be doing a lot of, now that he had tag-alongs of his own. Black hair struck hair half-heartedly from the back of the boy's head, suggesting the last Uchiha was as prickly as the porcupine he did his best to resemble, the length in front enough to hide facial features from those exceeding the boy's height. Effective in discouraging rooftop attackers, Kakashi couldn't help but assess, but the red and white fan spanning the back of his navy pullover was enough to render such tactics—accidental or no—obsolete. Family pride, while usually a good indicator of loyalty, would be enough to end the last of a priceless and jealously sought after bloodline before little Sasuke had a chance to even consider what it truly meant to 'restore a clan.'

The thought was enough to make him giggle, but Kakashi remembered himself and swallowed the urge. _Icha Icha Paradise_ whispered beneath his fingertips. He turned a page and pretended to read. They were in Training Ground Fifteen, one of the more structured and aesthetically pleasing training grounds Konoha had to offer. Despite the abundant outcropping of the now rare pillars of Hashirama trees, long stretches of trampled grass lay uprooted before them, bleached by chronic sunlight and brittle with its inadequate ratio of rainfall. Usually dedicated for speed training, given its remarkable acreage of both straight and hilled land, it was traditionally used each year as the backdrop for Genin team pictures. Thankfully, clouds offered a steady reprieve from yesterday's heat, allowing for a pleasant morning. As the photographer fiddled with the dials on his camera, Kakashi kept an idle eye on his tag-alongs. Sensei's son bounced in a way Sensei never would have (so restrained and regal was Minato-sensei, even in his youth), excitement radiating from every orifice in his compact body, in every sure step, every gesticulation of tireless hands, fueled by yesterday's success and a tentative hope for the future guarded carefully in familiar eyes. His mouth glimmered with a rare happiness Kakashi had never seen from him, and it was almost a shock to Kakashi's system, seeing Kushina-nee-san smile so brightly from beyond the grave. The boy gabbed almost nonstop to the quiet little girl with strange brown hair that curled in ringlets about her temples, tamed into a plait for this morning's activities. Such hair could only be hereditary, Kakashi thought, but he'd only seen it twice before: on an escapee he'd been commissioned to return to Ame, and on a red-haired toddler in Kiri. Of all his Genin, hers were the only parents he had yet to meet.

 _Or, parent,_ he amended, remembering the scant information from her Academy file. To know the parents of orphans seemed to be a theme of Kakashi's life; it interested him he knew more dead than living.

When it was clear Kakashi wasn't going to respond, a scowl tugged at Sasuke's pale cheeks.

"Kakashi-sensei," the boy said from Kakashi's shoulder, and it probably shouldn't amuse him that giving Kakashi such a respectful title rankled the boy with the same painful insistence as pulling teeth, but it did. "What is the point of this."

At Sasuke's age, Kakashi remembered thinking the entire process to be pointless and a waste of time. Of course, he'd been quite the jaded little shit in his childhood, and often thought anything that wasn't training, studying, or missions to be pointless and a waste of time. There had been a time in his life he'd hated even stopping to eat, and had lived almost entirely on food pills and ration bars.

He understood Sasuke's perspective, but he knew better than to give the jaded little shit validation.

Humming to himself, Kakashi turned another page. "Official documentation, clientele propaganda, sentimental keepsake, because I said so, take your pick," he said. And if Sasuke puffed up like an offended fish, it wasn't any business of Kakashi's; he really couldn't care less if he offended his tag-alongs. He was their boss, not their friend. They needed to understand the chain of command. And though he did his best to keep the boredom from his tone—comradery was difficult to foster in an environment of resentment—he'd never had the patience explaining what could be easily deduced from one's surroundings. Again, he questioned the Sandomine's sanity. Kakashi hadn't worked with children since his own Genin-Chunin team.

And for a good reason, he mused, peering over the top of his beloved book to the little people now under his command. Kassien Otawa. Sasuke Uchiha. Naruto. Three distinct and vastly different personalities and priorities, with hardly anything more in common than the unspoken taboo of dead parents. Although Naruto seemed determined to find something, given his inability to stop talking, despite the delicate peak of Kassien's eyebrows indicating that she felt overwhelmed. The last Uchiha clearly wasn't listening, disinterest a welcome change from the contempt usually spoiling his mother's good looks, as he watched a batch of Chunin run their series of sprints, becoming dark blurs that streaked the vast clearing. To an eye as untrained as a Genin's, they would have appeared as flits in their attention, invisible until they either slowed or stopped. An ache poked through Kakashi's focus, and he quelled the urge to rub the back of his head. This team would either fail miserably, unable to stand one another enough for teamwork, or become a cohesive force unlike anyone had ever seen, inseparable as children with nothing left to lose but each other tend to be. Kakashi foresaw issues with either outcome, but they'd cross that bridge when they got there. Preferably before it crumbled to shapeless rock and dust.

Still, he owed it to them to try. He owed it to Sensei.

"I still have my team photo," Kakashi admitted, not to why he did so. He blamed it on the nostalgia lingering like a rot in his brain. It must have affected his filter.

"Wow," Naruto piped up from somewhere about his other elbow. "I didn't know they had cameras back then, Kakashi-sensei."

Then again, Konoha shinobi knew Kakashi for his short emotional range. Surely, training Genin wasn't much different from ANBU hopefuls. It would be something of a learning experience.

"Hatake-san." The photographer, a retired Chunin of the Third Shinobi War, snapped an external bulb into place atop his camera. He regarded Kakashi with an apathetic stare, single brown eye blank where most would have been at least a little tickled by Naruto's daring, and gestured behind him. "Whenever you are ready."

Kakashi blinked languidly up from his novel, aged pages dry beneath the grasp of slack fingers. Leaves from the twisted bark of the Hashirama trees scattered light in angled fragments about the forest floor, bending around those present and laying square across the photographer's eye. Milky and unresponsive, his eyelid didn't even crease, which gave insight into the man's ninja career, although Kakashi understood it wasn't the blind eye, but psychological complications that kept him away from the field. It was nice to know Kakashi had options for when he finally cracked.

The process for the team photo was as pointless and time-consuming as Kakashi remembered, especially when the boys decided to run a two-man circus routine—something Kakashi was slowly, and regrettably, beginning to understand would be the norm for the upcoming future. He wondered if this was retribution for his own spats with Obito, and felt a deep kinship with his sensei. It had started with a simple question from the photographer about positioning. Naruto had responded at first with a full facial scrunch, tucking his chin into his hand while the other propped up his elbow, then with an epiphany that flipped Naruto's expression like a switch the boy bounced over to the silent little girl and threw his arm around her shoulder. Kassien's eyes widened from their perpetual slant, but Naruto's had closed, beaming at the world with his thumb jutted out before his chest. She had started under his arm and looked his way, then, after the slightest of moments, copied the boy with tentative understanding. Her smile remained uncertain, but when Naruto did nothing to throw her arm off, the other extended and she became genuine. A rare warmth flittered in Kakashi's chest at the image. Despite its horrifying, and hopefully coincidental, mimicry of Gai's patented 'Good Guy Pose,' it was actually kind of . . . cute.

Sasuke, conversely, did not agree. "You look stupid," the jaded little shit remarked, and something uncomfortable creased in Kassien's eyes before she folded all expression away with a great and surprising efficiency Kakashi hadn't seen since Itachi Uchiha.

Naruto's responding scowl ripped his cheer to shreds. "Fuck you, Bastard," he said, displaying his affinity for the blunt and vulgar—something that Kakashi would have worried about had this conversation happened in Hokage Tower, under the express evaluation of his peers and superiors. As it was, the photographer may as well have been carved into the bark of the trees around him, such was his lack of response. He merely waited, camera in hand. Naruto and Sasuke continued their verbal spar about one's intelligence (or lack thereof), and Kassien drifted from Naruto's friendly hold and stepped further into the shadows of Hashirama's creation, eyes darting between the boys. She swallowed a few times, seeming to shrink into her charcoal rain jacket when Naruto's voice reached an unreasonable pitch.

Kakashi may or may not have threatened them with an obscene amount of laps around the village, but eventually the boys calmed enough to stand tersely together, a sulk but a downward tug on Sasuke's features, dark eyes slitted and angled pointedly away from Naruto, whose arms were folded tightly across his chest, bristled from the yellow spikes of his hair to the fingers grasping his forearms. Irritation charged the air about them, and the heady sludge of dislike seemed to roll off their shoulders in palpable waves. Kakashi nudged a reluctant Kassien to stand between them. She fidgeted, twisting the hem of her right sleeve with bony fingers. Though Sasuke appeared not to have noticed her presence, Naruto marginally relaxed, something soft releasing the anger once embedded in unsightly wrinkles on his face.

Relief a soothing balm to his patience, Kakashi tucked his book into his vest and found his place behind his students. He slipped his hands in his pockets. "Alright, kiddos," he said, and nodded toward the retired Chunin. "Look at the camera and pretend we're at least half civilized."

Had Naruto not nodded a dozen times, Kakashi would have believed the boy understood him.

"I can do that, Sensei," Naruto declared. "I'm good at being civilized. I'll be the most civilized ninja the world has ever seen!"

Kakashi didn't sigh, but he wanted to. Something felt very wrong with that sentence. Maybe it was the montage of assassinations imprinted on his Sharingan.

The photographer pressed the camera to his good eye.

"The only thing you're good at," Sasuke said, soft as the leaves rustling above their heads, "is that jutsu that turns you into a little bitch."

Something feral rumbled between Naruto's teeth, and he turned to look over Kassien's head at the other boy. Sasuke tilted his head, satisfaction a dark tint in the curved line of his smirk.

The camera flashed. Kakashi fisted the hair of both boys and forced them to face frontwards, exasperation dwindling into a faint apology as white ebbed from the corners of his vision. Though he and Obito had traded their own share of verbal abuse, he didn't remember ever being so candid with insults. Nor did he swear. At least, he sighed, wishing he could shunshin away with the photographer as Naruto threw himself at Sasuke, he escaped the fate of unnecessary and tiresome drama that accompanied a love triangle.

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 **Kinda not happy with the last section. I redid it a few times and am still not satisfied. I wanted to put his first impressions of the kiddos in there, but I frankly wanted to get this out (because you've all waited long enough, I think), and it's a little hard to think at the moment. Expect this chapter to look a bit different when I post the next one. I'll definitely redo the last section when I'm feeling a little less concussed. (I can't read or run or do anything. Much suckage up in here)**

 **Enjoy your weekend!**


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